Reconciliation my left Nut

Oh, crap, I am going to get political again, despite my better judgment. Please forgive me as I present my perspective in front of you folks. And to my Canadian fans, I do beg your forgiveness as well as you indulge me in American politics.

Late last night on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 I learned that Congress, and the Democratic party majority have been openly talking about using a parliamentary procedure called “reconciliation” to force health care reform through the Senate and become law.

Nominally in the United States Senate it requires a vote of Sixty members in order to pass a bill and present to the President. Reconciliation was introduce to permit a simple majority (51% of the votes present) to pass budgetary measures. This way no single senator could hold up vital legislation in indefinite debate.

This is not the first time a party in power has threatened to use a parliamentary procedure tog et something done, nor is it something that was proposed eons ago. In 2005 President Bush had numerous Appointees held up in debate by then minority democrats, using the filibuster to prevent judges from being appointed. It was Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) who suggested changing the senate rules to permit a simple majority for the “advise and consent” of the senate for approval of judicial nominees.

Democrats argued that they were holding up Bush appointees the same way that republicans held up Clinton appointees, often for the same spot. Thus the whole exercise became a whining match between two groups of kindergardners. It was only through the wisdom of Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) along with a dozen other like minded senators that this disastrous turn of events was prevented.

Now with the Democratic Party in power history is set to repeat itself, with ramifications much more immediate and obvious then forcing through judicial nominees. What is worse is that the Democratic Party leaders are doing this in response to dissent from within their own ranks, as opposed to partisan bickering. How soon it is that people forget history, and what it is like to have a gun pointed to you head.

My personal problem with the use of the Reconciliation tactic, or as it became known in 2005 the “nuclear option”, is that it makes partisan politics all the more likely to occur. Although one can argue, usually with success, that the slippery slope is not a legitimate debate tactic, the fact is that politics and the laws that are made from them are an exercise in precedent. If one group can justify the use of a parliamentary tactic for X purpose, then the other group can use it for Y purpose. So far it looks like mere threatening of Reconciliation is now going to be an accepted tactic in Congress. If it is actually used however, then American politics will be forever changed until the two major parties have permanently split into smaller groups.

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.” George Washington’s Farwell Address September 17, 1796