House Minority Whip Eric Cantor summed up the bipartisan summit yesterday at the Blair House… Obama told us he would proceed to ram through his unpopular nationalized health care bill using the reconciliation process without us.
The Washington Post prepared the country today for the inevitability that democrats will ram their bill through Congress using the reconciliation process.
After a year that has seen nothing go easily in his health care drive, Obama began building a case Thursday for using reconciliation, sometimes called the “nuclear option.” The process would let Senate Democrats derail a GOP filibuster – delays that take 60 votes to end – and muscle a bill through with a simple majority. Republicans have had 41 Senate seats since their surprise win in last month’s Massachusetts special election.
“I think most Americans think that a majority vote makes sense,” Obama told Republicans Thursday at his daylong health care summit with top lawmakers.
Republicans say reconciliation was never meant for legislation as sweeping as reshaping the country’s health care system. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Obama’s presidential opponent in 2008, told Obama it would harm the nation’s future, while Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., asked him to “renounce this idea of going back to the Congress and jamming through” a reconciliation bill.
