Tell me if you’ve ever faced the following situation. You want to carry two things upstairs. You are holding one, but because of the awkward shape of the second item you can’t pick it up without putting the first item down. In other words, you picked these two items up in the wrong order and you have to start over by picking the second item up first and then the first item after that. Has that ever happen to you?
That’s the basic situation that the Democrats in the House are facing with the health care bill. They want to just vote on the reconciliation part of the bill because it doesn’t include the crappy stuff that is in the Senate bill. In fact, the reconciliation bill explicitly eliminates the crappy stuff in the Senate bill. Unfortunately, they have to carry both bills up the stairs and they can’t carry the reconciliation bill until they have first picked up the more awkward Senate bill.
By using a rule that allows them to pick up both items at the same time, they avoid the problem with picking them up sequentially. It’s like a magic tool, like a powerful magnet, that solves the problem. But at the end of the day nothing else has changed. The same two items are carried up the stairs.
Now, consider the following:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has acknowledged that Democrats are considering the option in part because votes for the Senate bill are hard to come by, and in part to shield members from attacks directed at their support for certain provisions in the Senate bill, including the “Cornhusker Kickback.”
Republicans have pounced on the issue, and many took to the floor Tuesday to decry the tactic as an avoidance of responsibility and potentially unconstitutional.
How is it an avoidance of responsibility to avoid voting for something you are going to eliminate five minutes later? It’s as if the Republicans are demanding that, having picked up the wrong item first you make two trips up the stairs instead of using your magic magnet. It’s one of the stupidest arguments I’ve ever heard. Of course, we wouldn’t need a magic magnet if there were fewer Democrats afraid of stupid arguments.
