year for various things. initially it was designed and largely still designed to effect the budget deficit usually to bring it down when republicans were in power they were doing tax cuts which then sort of used to it increase deficits in outgoing years. the idea is largely for it to be about the budget and to be able to do some policy changes that affect the budget. the controversy that you get into when you stretch that into work a little further towards policy, it is less towards the budget deficit reduction. couldn t democrats have used this months ago? yes. they could have done it a long time ago. i think there was a desire among democrats to try to find something that was bipartisan. one of the dangers in using reconciliation or using it procedural tool to get around the existing rules of the senate is that you are using it because you western able to get bipartisanship. as a result of that you may find the bill is not as popular in