Republican Senator a hypocrite on reconciliation and Health Care reform

At the recent health-care summit President Obama was clear on what bipartisanship should mean. The President noted the Democrats, who happen to be in the majority, had added many Republican ideas while the health care bills were going through committee in both the House and Senate last summer. Obama said he was open to four more that came up during the health-care summit. What he's unwilling to do is give the minority veto power over a bill that has deliberately and painfully worked its way through the regular legislative process.

Republicans, on the contrary, don't want to talk about the crux of health care. They want to discuss process and turn reconciliation into a four-letter word and maintain that Democrats are "ramming through" a health bill.

In a letter to the Washington Post, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) offered a first-rate example of republican hypocrisy. From the start the Senator’s opinion piece was dishonest on a central fact. Hatch accused the Democrats of trying to ram a multitrillion-dollar health-care bill through the Senate.

What Hatch failed to state was that the health-care bill passed the Senate in December with 60 votes. The only thing that would pass under a simple majority vote would be a series of amendments to deal with money issues.

Hatch noted that America's Founders wanting the Senate to be about deliberation. Yet there is nothing in the Constitution about the filibuster or reconciliation. The Founders would likely be appalled that every major bill now needs a three-fifths majority to pass the Senate because of republican obstructionism.

Hatch misquoted Sens. Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Kent Conrad (D-ND) as opposing the use of reconciliation on health care. Byrd said a year ago he was opposed to passing the entire bill under reconciliation. Conrad had said that it's perfectly appropriate to use reconciliation to improve or perfect the health care proposal, which is what the Democrats are proposing to do through reconciliation.

Hatch said that reconciliation should not be used for substantive legislation unless the legislation has significant bipartisan support. This runs counter to when he and his republican cohorts passed Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts under reconciliation, and thereby increased the deficit by $1.7 trillion which would count for substantive legislation. The 2003 tax cut could muster only 50 votes requiring Vice President Dick Cheney to break the tie.

It appears that Hatch’s and his republican friends believe that it's fine to pass tax cuts for the wealthy on narrow votes, but an outrage to use reconciliation to help middle-income and poor people get health insurance.