What They Fail To Say Is That Bush Did It Several Times

As FOX News tries to paint health care passed under budget reconciliation as another "nuclear option" extension of Obamafascism.

A key House committee on Thursday quietly altered its health care legislation in a way that could allow the Senate to mow over Republican opposition to Democratic reforms by exploiting a budgetary loophole.

The Ways and Means Committee adjusted its health care overhaul package so that the Senate, down the road, could avoid a filibuster and pass health care reform with a smaller number of votes than normally required.

The long-discussed process, nicknamed the "nuclear option," is known as reconciliation. It's coming into potential play after the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday became the last of five committees to approve health care reform legislation, sending the overhaul proposals a big step closer to the president's desk. Before it gets there, though, the bill has to pass from the committees to the floors of the House and Senate.

Under the normal process, senators can filibuster almost anything and the debate would only be cut off if at least 60 lawmakers vote to do so. For that reason, 60 is considered the magic number in the quest to pass health care reform out of the Senate.

Note how a Senate filibuster, another parliamentary procedure, is considered not only "the normal process" but required in order to pass legislation by FOX News. It is not. Legislation only needs 51 votes to pass, and even then technically legislation only needs 50 votes plus a tiebreaker cast by the Vice-President.

But FOX here frames going around the filibuster instead of leveling the playing field as somehow scurrilous, unconstitutional, and wrong even though Republicans have filibustered nearly every single bill in the last three years.

And people wonder why FOX News should be considered a partisan entertainment division of News Corporation rather than a news outlet.