i didn t hear senator hatch complaining about that. two of those involve president bush s tax cuts which added $1.7 trillion to our deficit. now, if that isn t significant policy change i don t know what is. there was no complaint about that. so with senator hatch saying it s okay to use reconciliation to pass tax cuts for the wealthy, but it s just terrible to use it if you re going to extend health care coverage, i say let s not talk about a phony process argument, let s talk about the problems people have with health care. they were they had bipartisan votes. in two of them, in 1993, clinton s bill, yeah, they got reconciliation on purely partisan vote but congress changed to republican t. republicans did the same thing and i think it was 2005, got a bill through just on a partisan vote and it changed to democrat. the fact of the matter is you talking about bipartisanship
talking about bipartisanship picked up one or two democrats. you cannot ignore the fact we re talking about the first time in history sweeping social legislation will be passed if they get their way, by a totally partisan vote. one-sixth of the american economy. if we do that katie bar the door. i got to tell you. it s the republican party were not sitting there being obstructionist, what senator hatch is saying is if republicans unite and say we won t vote for this, and you need bipartisanship he is saying democrats can t govern. if $1.7 trillion in cuts isn t significant. rich lowry, the question is whether this amounts to petty politics on either side, depending on your point of view, or whether this is a leadership issue. a process argument like these are always festivals of partisan hypocrassy is. no one is concerned with the
is vote for reconciliation, if there were votes in reconciliation it probably would have been done t. question is if there are not enough votes to pass by reconciliation you reach out to the democrats and you begin to reach out to some republicans. when lbj and the republican leader worked to pass civil rights legislation they worked together. maybe that s the president and the team now can find ways to bring a few republicans over and if you have to vote with the reconciliation vote, wouldn t it be amazing if you lost a few democrats and picked up a few republicans. it might make it easier. amazing. how about a miracle. i don t put amazing out of reach. warren buffett was on a sister network and said if plan a we have to accept. if plan b is the option which is the senate bill. really a plan c is needed. might be plan c, a reconciliation approach could be adopted if we found ways to win some republicans over, hold onto the core of democrats and pass a
lost in the weeds if you will. there s a lot of technical issues here. when people understand what s in the bill, a new insurance marketplace, giving small business owners and individuals the same choices that members of congress have, new rules for insurance companies and david, this is a fundamental difference between republicans and democrats. they really don t believe that insurance companies should have more consumer protections, more oversight that it should change the rules and i think at the end of the day that may be the dividing line where republicans will not vote for a bill that cracks down on insurance company abuses, changes the practices. you had unified opposition from republicans. did you also have a breakdown in the president and administration s communication to the american people about what the goal was and how you would get there? i think when you have anything that s this comprehensive, there are always strategies along the way that focus on things. we spent
this dog through. the 2711-page dog. first of all, i find it astonishing that so many republicans who when president bush surged troops into iraq against the polls said this is a courageous act and when president obama tries to push a health care bill against the polls this is a terrible thing, this is not a consistent argument. several points. the health bill thatment obama will sign got 60 votes in the senate. that s the bill the house would pass. the only thing that s being talked about here are amendments that would be passed through reconciliation dealing with money which is in the tradition of conciliation. second, senator hatch keeps saying this is unprecedented in scope. and that you need bipartisan support. there is a chart in the new york times today put together by tom mann of brookings and their colleagues. there are seven instances where reconciliation was used in cases where the bill got fewer than 60