In a nutshell he says reconciliation can only be used for budgetary matters, even though he concedes that it’s been used for social legislation in the past. The difference between those cases and this one, he says, is that previous mal-uses of reconciliation were overwhelmingly bi-partisan. To him the 60 Democratic votes the legislation has already achieved counts for nil since there was no substantial Republican support.

This argument should really be offensive, especially when you consider the number of voters represented by the 60 Senators that voted for the bill compared to the number represented by the 40 that voted against it.

I brought up the second round of Bush tax cuts which required Dick Cheney, acting as tie-breaker, to cast the deciding vote. Hatch pointed out that it was a $350 billion bill; this health care bill deals with $2.5 trillion. Of course, Democrats will say that the health care bill is, at worst, revenue neutral and that in may even reduce overall costs.

In any event, it’s not clear to me why Democrats could not have raised the same hue and cry when tax cuts were passed over their objections. Why couldn’t they have said that such a partisan use of reconciliation would doom the Senate?