Reconciling Reconciliation

One of the arguments I've seen against reconciliation is that it's only used for getting partisan measures through the Senate past the filibuster.  The Bush tax cuts, for example, went through on reconciliation.  That's true, but there's a difference between the Bush tax cuts and health care reform.  Bush also jammed them through with no effort to even worry about getting the Dems on board.  You can't say that with the health care reform process, now going on ten months.

The argument the Republicans are now using to try to block health care reform is that they are demanding that the Democrats immediately put a halt to efforts in the Senate to use reconciliation and permanently take reconciliation off the table in order for the GOP to even come to the summit now.

President Barack Obama must take a procedural maneuver to pass healthcare reform with a simple majority off the table, the second-ranking House Republican said Friday.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) urged Obama to reject using the budget reconciliation process to pass health reform, a tactic that would allow Democrats to finish health reform without any GOP support.

“If the president is sincere about moving forward in a bipartisan fashion, he must take the reconciliation process — which will be used to jam through legislation that a majority of Americans do not want — off the table," Cantor said in a statement.

Let's pause and review.  The key phrase here in the article is "a procedural maneuver to pass healthcare reform with a simple majority".  This is the default mode that the Senate should be.  The only reason that this is not the case is because the Republicans are using a procedural maneuver to prevent legislation being passed with a simple majority, called the filibuster.

The correct Democratic party response to this is really exceedingly simple:

"We're only using reconciliation, which is a perfectly legitimate way to pass legislation with a simple 51-vote majority, because the Republicans are threatening to filibuster and will not allow this legislation to pass with a simple 51-vote majority vote.  We will take reconciliation off the table if the Republicans in turn take the filibuster off the table.  Your move, Representative Cantor."

That's all the Dems have to say.

How about it, guys?

Oh, and the Senate Bill already got 60 votes.