A string of electoral defeats and the great unpopularity of ObamaCare can't stop Democrats from their self-appointed rendezvous with liberal destiny—ramming a bill through Congress on a narrow partisan vote. What we are about to witness is an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules to pass a bill merely because they think it's good for the rest of us, and because they fear their chance to build a European welfare state may never come again.

The vehicle is "reconciliation," a parliamentary process that fast-tracks budget measures and was created in 1974 as a deficit-reduction tool. Limited to 20 hours of debate, reconciliation bills need a mere 50 votes in the Senate, with the Vice President as tie-breaker, thus circumventing the filibuster. Both Democrats and Republicans have frequently used reconciliation on budget bills, so Democrats are now claiming that using it to pass ObamaCare is no big deal.

Yet this shortcut has never been used for anything approaching the enormity of a national health-care entitlement. Democrats are only resorting to it now because their plan is in so much political trouble—within their own party, and even more among the general public—and because they've failed to make their case through persuasion.

As Maine Republican Olympia Snowe pointed out in a speech last December, Social Security passed when Democrats controlled both Congress and the White House, yet 64% of Senate Republicans and 79% of the House GOP voted for it. More than half of the Senate Republican caucus voted for Medicare in 1965. Historically, major social legislation has always been bipartisan, because it reflects a durable political consensus.

Former Senate parliamentarian Robert Dove on reconciliation: ""Reconciliation has been used a lot. And I would never use the term illegitimate with regard to reconciliation. It has been used starting in 1980 for very large, major bills. And it is a way, of course, of getting around the problem of the Senate filibuster." See the video.

Yet this shortcut has never been used for anything approaching the enormity of a national health-care entitlement.

Pop quiz; COBRA is the acronym used to describe the law that allows laid off employees to retain their employment-based insurance after leaving the company. What does "RA" stand for?

a mere 50 votes in the Senate, with the Vice President as tie-breaker,

Uhhhhh..."Republican Amnesia?"

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) was on Fox News this morning and called reconciliation a way to "railroad the American people and the Congress." This is the same Judd Gregg who took to the Senate floor in 2005 to defend reconciliation as merely a "rule of the Senate" that allows for a simple majority vote. Video after the jump.

On April 16, 2001, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) took to Fox News to boast about the GOP's first major use of the budget reconciliation process in the Bush-era. "I think we can do a reconciliation bill that'll have an overwhelming number of senators and congresspeople voting for this $1.3 trillion to $1.6 trillion tax cut," he said.

Today, he has a somewhat different take.

"To impose the will of some Democrats and to circumvent bipartisan opposition, President Obama seems to be encouraging Congress to use the "reconciliation" process, an arcane budget procedure, to ram through the Senate a multitrillion-dollar health-care bill that raises taxes, increases costs and cuts Medicare to fund a new entitlement we can't afford," Hatch writes in a Washington Post op-ed today. "This is attractive to proponents because it sharply limits debate and amendments to a mere 20 hours and would allow passage with only 51 votes (as opposed to the 60 needed to overcome a procedural hurdle). But the Constitution intends the opposite process, especially for a bill that would affect one-sixth of the American economy."

Former Senate parliamentarian Robert Dove on reconciliation: ""Reconciliation has been used a lot. And I would never use the term illegitimate with regard to reconciliation. It has been used starting in 1980 for very large, major bills. And it is a way, of course, of getting around the problem of the Senate filibuster." See the video.

In a display of chutzpah extreme even by modern conservative standards, Sam Stein reports that Republicans have begun a campaign to "cast doubt" on the impartiality of Senate Parliamentarian Alan Frumin. Why is this so brazen? Because they're the ones who hired him in the first place:



Nickel summary: Republicans hired Frumin in 2001 specifically because they thought he might issue friendlier rulings to Republicans. Now they're afraid he's turned on them.