How Obamacrats Are Stifling Debate To Fast-Track Socialized Healthcare!

The Left is attempting to radically transform the United States as we know it. This time their vehicle is the FY2010 Budget which contains dangerous provisions to enact socialized medicine, expensive cap and trade regulations and more government control of higher education. The Left is using what is called the “Budget Reconciliation” procedures to fast-track its pet programs with a simple majority vote in the Senate instead of the more difficult 60-vote threshold needed to break a filibuster. Basically, the Liberal Left are making backroom deals, behind closed doors and without the scrutiny of the American people.

Reconciliation is a legislative process of the U.S. Senate intended to allow a contentious budget bill to be considered without being subject to filibuster. Reconciliation also applies to the U.S. House, but the House regularly passes rules that constrain debate and amendments, thus the reconciliation process has less impact in the House.

In layman’s terms, the reconciliation process is a way to expedite the process of merging the first budget resolution that Congress passed at the beginning of each year with the second budget resolution. Congress passes a budget resolution at the beginning of the year and then builds the appropriations bills off of that outline. Toward the end of the year, another resolution is passed. At that point, reconciliation procedures are used to reconcile the budget resolution.

Unfortunately, the reconciliation process has drifted far from its origins and is now used as a tool to crush the minority. The budget reconciliation may have had noble purposes at one time but now the process is used to bypass "regular order" in the Senate. Regular order is the standard Senate procedures whereby there is unlimited debate on a bill and 60 votes are required to invoke "cloture" and end the debate, forcing a vote. In a Congressional climate where one party has a very strong majority -- as we currently have -- the threat of filibuster and the 60-vote cloture threshold is the only protection the minority has to total majority domination.

Here’s how it works—The Left wants to ram Universal Healthcare and Cap and Trade through the reconciliation process. Congress includes reconciliation instructions in the budget. Those instructions direct certain committees (i.e., Finance Committee, Health, Energy, Labor, and Pensions Committee) to produce health-reform legislation or a cap and trade system, hitting certain spending targets by a certain deadline. Once finished, the legislation is tossed back to the Budget Committee, which staples it together into an omnibus bill and sends it to the floor of the Senate for twenty hours of debate followed by an up or down 50-member vote.

The above example is exactly what the Democratic Majority is pushing through the budget process this week.