he has a rule in reconciliation named after him. the byrd rule. republicans are talking about it a lot these days because what they are pointing out is through the byrd rule and other points of order you can raise in reconciliation, you can have things struck from the bill and in order for the democrats to preserve those things in the bill it requires 60 votes so there are, in effect, many 60-vote thresholds that come up in the course of a reconciliation bill. republicans threaten to push every one of them. senator robert byrd pushing back in the only way he can at this point saying in his view, he s echoing what senator kent conrad said this week. in his view this is not a violation of byrd rules to take pieces of the overall legislation and adjust them once they have passed into law by the house passing the senate bill. does senator byrd put to rest the idea that there might be some basic fundamental problem
other democrats if you lose the stupak group who voted for it the first time, is there a way to pick up other democrats who did not vote for it the first time in the house? well, i think so. this is a lot of moving parts. there are a lot of people who like the senate bill which i believe is far deficient to what we have in the house. a lot of people said, i will vote for that because it s a weaker bill. there might be more votes there. one thing that makes this complicated that the viewers should understand and you can write this down, not a single republican is going to do anything to help this process along. automatically you re stuck with a tiny margin in the house and senate. nancy pelosi is a great politician but it s like pick up sticks. you can pick up a stick but don t move anything else. that s what s hard about this. the president insisted yesterday to the liberal members of congress that it is not possible to pass the public option in the senate at the same time that the
f forbade the clinton reform bill going through reconciliation in its entirety but conrad and byrd were never faced about what about tiny fixes to it after it s already law which is where we stand here. right. exam. so i think what you are seeing here is something sort of entirely new. the point of the reconciliation is it is rules. you can look at them. you have somebody who can decide if it s within the rules and ultimately he will decide this is not a game that s going to be won with press releases and out of context quotes. at the end of the day republicans and democrats present arguments to the senate parliamentarian and he rules up or down. but things like taxes and subsidies are clear and that s the bulk of whatter this doing now, it won t be much of a problem. ezra klein and i could drive the audience away by discussing this all night. coming up, liz cheney plays the
democrats that he is for the public option but the senate does not have the votes. carson weiner of new york is kind enough to join us in studio tonight. it s déjà vu all over again. we are back to bart stupak and abortion. the problem is the language isn t strong enough for him and we have to rediagram this every night. the idea is you in the house will pass the senate bill as is so there is a past law that you can then amend in effect through the reconciliation process. st stupak says i cannot vote for it with that language in it. is this a roadblock to stop the process? it is a roadblock. with the margin being so close, just about any group on any issue can say, i m going to hold this up and in this case it s on this issue. we heard it argued in immigration. we heard it argued in lots of
sergeant at the plumb line blog that they will use the byrd rule to try to bleed the reconciliation fix to death and ensure it never passes. but today, the author of the rule, senator robert byrd, endorsed the democrats plan to use a majority vote to finish the health care bill. in a letter to west virginia newspaper, senator byrd wrote that a limited bill structured to adjust some of the elements of the already passed senate bill may be consistent with the budget act and appropriately considered under reconciliation. in an op-ed for politico.com weiner asked why it is not being called for a vote. yesterday at the white house, president obama told progressive