Karl Rove flip-flops on reconciliation: Now he’s all for using it to undo health-care reform
Click here to view this media If the name of my site, CrooksandLiars, refers to anyone in the world, Karl Rove would be among the top 10. He just wrote an op-ed in the WSJ saying that Republicans can use “reconciliation” to repeal our new health care law: Former Bush strategist Karl Rove is urging congressional Republicans to use Democrats’ own tactics against them to force the repeal of President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law. Rove said Thursday that he wants to see the Senate GOP use the budget reconciliation process to repeal the law with a simple majority, not the 60-plus votes they would need to pass a separate repeal bill. “Democrats cannot complain if the GOP uses reconciliation after Democrats used it to pass ObamaCare through the Senate,” Rove wrote on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page . If Republicans are able to pick up at least four seats in the 2012 election — which would give them a simple majority of 51 and allow them to take the chairmanships of all Senate committees — Rove said he thinks the party will be able to roll back health care reform. Under reconciliation, “the Senate Budget Committee could instruct the Senate Finance Committee to reduce mandatory spending on insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion. These two items make up more than 90 [percent] of spending in ObamaCare,” he wrote. “All the changes from all the committees” could then be “bundled into one measure and voted upon” as a budget bill, meaning it would only need 51 votes to pass. Because reconciliation is protected by the rules of the budget process, it doesn’t take 60 votes to overcome a filibuster threat, and it requires a simple majority to pass. Jonathan Chait finally writes something that I agree with: Karl Rove has an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal today — and, yes, I admit that merely typing those words involuntarily triggers my saliva glands — that is entirely dedicated to urging Republicans to use the budget reconciliation process to repeal the Affordable Care Act: Fear not, sayeth Speaker Pelosi, all will be fixed with the magic dust known as “reconciliation”—a process that allows budget and spending bills to move through the Senate with 51 votes instead of 60…House Democrats would be foolish to trust a process that has deeply alienated the American public. No, wait, sorry! That’s his March 11, 2010 column entitled “The Trouble With ‘Reconciliation.’” Here is Rove’s pro-reconciliation column: Legislation that looks anything like the bill moving through the House will contain deeply unpopular provisions — including massive deficit spending, tax hikes and Medicare cuts — and create enormous ill will on Capitol Hill. This will be especially true if Democrats rely on parliamentary tricks to pass a bill in the Senate with 51 votes. Argh. Whoops. That turns out to be a Rove column from September, 2009 denouncing the use of reconciliation. Let’s see if this is it: MR. BROKAW: But the fact of the matter is we don’t know the exact definition of the final bill because it’ll go through this complicated process, get to reconciliation, some of the costs will be addressed then. MR. ROVE: Right. And, and isn’t that amazing? We’re asking people of the U.S. House, House of Representatives not to vote on the bill but to vote on a placeholder. And the final terms of this huge measure affecting one-sixth of our economy will be defined later, perhaps in a, in a bill in the Senate designed to circumvent the normal order of business. That’s a pretty remarkable way to try and go pass a big piece of legislation without bipartisan support. Darn it! That’s Rove appearing on “Meet the Press” last March. Republicans like Rove lie with impunity, and it’s up to us to always try and set the record straight. The MSM should do the same, but since conservative misinformation is permitted they usually don’t. I did think David Gregory sufficiently called out John Boehner over his refusal to set the record straight for the Birthers.
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Karl Rove flip-flops on reconciliation: Now he’s all for using it to undo health-care reform
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on February 14, 2011. Filed under