Reconciliation with McCain's Nuclear Addled Brain

Heck... Reconciliation with the entire GOP echo chamber's Nuclear addled brains.

The best arguments against the so called nuclear option, widely considered as a measure that might be useful in passing the health care initiatives of President Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and the better angels of Hillary Clinton’s nature were made in 05 by the politicos mentioned above.

What Nuclear Option to pass healthcare is the GOP harping on about?

"The Nuclear Option" was when the Republicans wanted to get rid of the filibuster rule so they could push through far right wing extremist judicial appointments. Though, I suspect they would have tried to go nuclear on every issue they could have gotten away with once they had abused it for Bush nominees. And as hard as it would be to believe that there were more extremist judges than the five GOP SCOTUS activist judges that handed election funding over to foreign owned corporations and their lobbyists recently, and as much as Bush's Alito and Roberts appointments deserved to be Borked back to the typically extremist Federalist Society rocks they crawled out from under, none of that had anything to do with budgetary issues as Healthcare Reform does.

Reconciliation is an often used part of the Senate rules on passing legislation dealing with budgetary issues.

More often used by the GOP than the Democratic party, as well. Though it is used to get around filibusters it has nothing to do with going nuclear on political appointees. Healthcare reform is a budgetary issue and so is reconciliation. Get over it. The GOP abused reconciliation to kick the poor and middle class just as the GOP have always abused the filibuster to kick Americans when they are in the minority. Just look at what Bunning is doing to the unemployed and Medicare right now with his current filibuster.

Healthcare Reform has absolutely nothing to do with "The Nuclear Option" and those of you falsely using "The Nuclear Option" talking point know it. Trying to muddy the waters of the debate with nonsensical GOP talking point crap will not work. And...

You cannot rewrite history and expect to get away with it around here.

The only problem Republicans have with reconciliation is the fact that this time the Democratic party will be using it and they will be using it for something that is good policy for all of the people if they do it right. And as John McCain pointed out a while back, it is the fault of the GOP for having used it so often and so egregiously (Twice the GOP used it for Tax Cuts for the uber rich. The GOP also used it for cuts to Welfare, Medicaid and Medicare) that set the precedence to use it more often now.

MCCAIN: "I fully recognize that Republicans have in the past engaged in using reconciliation to further the party’s agenda. I wish it had not been done then, and I hope it will not be done now that the groundwork has been laid."

Since that comment last year, even McCain is talking the false GOP talking point in his nuclear addled brain, too. Now that reconciliation, a simple up or down vote in the budget process, is actually going to be used to pass a mish-mash of conservative GOP and Democratic ideas under Obama's watch?

Suddenly it is the nuclear end of the world to every right wing propagandist out there:

[McCain] then admitted that reconciliation has been used in the past, but “never before” for something as costly has health care and that using it now would all but ruin the U.S. Senate as an institution and “harm the future of our country”:

MCCAIN: The last time when there was a proposal that we Republicans in the majority would adopt a 51 vote majority on the issue of the confirmation of judges. There was a group of us that got together and said no that’s not the right way to go because that could deal a fatal blow to the unique aspect of the United States Senate which is a 60 vote majority. And we came to an agreement and it was brought to a halt.

If a 51 vote reconciliation is enacted on one-sixth of our gross national product. Never before has there been –- there’s been reconciliation but not at the level of an issue of this magnitude and I think I could harm the future of our country and our institution which I loved a great deal for a long, long time.

(Watch the video)

First, the “nuclear option” McCain referred to is not synonymous with “reconciliation” in general. It is the latest dishonest GOP talking point simply meant to derail health care reform.

Little wonder why Grampa Abe McCain needs to be reminded of what he said last year when he has to be reminded every day that he lost the last election to Obama.

Rachel Maddow takes on the whole crew of nutjobs screeching about "Nuclear" like a bomb went off in their brains:

Maddow: What's going on here is a deliberate attempt on the part of Republicans to define nuclear down -- to conflate these two totally separate things to demonize the way that Democrats have to pass health reform right now. By calling it the nuclear option even though the nuclear option is a real thing in the Senate, and this isn't that -- it has nothing to do with that. Perhaps the reason that Republicans are so unwilling to call this what it is, reconciliation is because they have a really long record of using reconciliation.

For those of you more interested in spreading propaganda and false GOP talking points than actually debating policy and issue based on facts, reality and their merits? I suggest you not try to pass that stuff off in the blogosphere.

All it will get you is a swift kick back from pragmatists on the reality side.

Below the fold and via FDL, an excerpt of some of the long list of Republicans' more recent usages of reconciliation that could just as easily be titled "The GOP plan to kick and beat the old, the young, the sick and the poor through Reconciliation" and note that healthcare legislation is, more often than not as Rachel Maddow pointed out, passed through reconciliation:

Since Republicans Want to Kill Medicare...

and Social Security too, a fact that may upset some GOP activists because they have to deal with that reality in the trenches and this is not something most of them want to talk to voters about leading up to the next round of elections. And given the fact that I am just a moderate little "i" indy with no party affiliation - I just play nicer on the left/Democratic party side of the Blogosphere because, much like myself and for the most part, they deal from the reality deck - I thought I would point to a story in The New Haven Independent covering CT-05's Rep. Chris Murphy discussing the issue of Healthcare Reform with activists that understand the problems we are all trying to deal with.

To be blunt, Murphy thinks the Democratic party needs to come out swinging and drive reform through.

Instead of running from health care reform, Democrats need to swing back, and not dumb it down in reaction to right-wing talking points.

Myself, personally? I agree. Healthcare reform has been one of my pet issues for years. I have written about the fact that it is quickly becoming the anchor that will sink the entire US economy. And it is precisely because of the fact that the for-profit driven insurance madness currently sucks up about 16 to 17% of the USA's GDP, an astronomical number compared to almost every other nation that we have to compete with in the global market.

In 2007 I wrote about the fact that "each vehicle assembled in the United States cost GM $1,525 for health care; those made in Canada cost GM $197."

But it is not just applicable to the auto industry. The competitive disadvantage this puts us at in the global market and in every industry is mind boggling. Meanwhile, while we suffer the consequences of not only being at a severe competitive disadvantage, the for-profit insurers deny care an ever growing number of people.

Because of our dysfunctional system pitting profits against the value of a life or their health, the uninsured have zero access to basic primary and preventative care, the only care they may have access to is costly hospital emergency room care, and a growing number of people are seeing their private plans disintegrate in value or being dropped completely by their employers. And the inured still have to deal with ever rising co-pays that literally put access to actually using their insurance out of their financial reach and have to deal with insurance companies that pay bonuses to a herd of people hired to do nothing but deny you care you already paid for in your policy.

There are better answers. 

And these better answers come from the reality side of the aisle I was talking about earlier in the post. While not all in the left nor on the Democratic side agree with this action, it is an action that they all admit would work:

Dr. Emmanuel Logiadis (at right in photo) implored Murphy to lead the charge to make sure some changes, such as the Medicare expansion, get passed through reconciliation. The Senate needs only 50 votes in that process, not the 60 it needs to overcome a filibuster.



Medicare eligibility age can be lowered to zero, said Logiadis, a doctor from Trumbull. That would make many of his friends in their 20s and 30s happy, he said. They could now say, “I worked for Obama, and now he has delivered for me health care for life.”


“For the life of me I don’t see why [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid doesn’t actually force the Republicans to filibuster—- I would have killed to see the Republicans argue against expansion of Medicare,” Murphy said.

Real Healthcare Reform can still happen. 

Reform that both the people and the businesses that do actually provide real services and real material goods to the economy would benefit greatly from. Real reform that would easily cut out about 25 to 27% of American healthcare costs right off the top and immediately as soon as it is implemented.

There is a reality that is too often lost in the debate, too easily ignored by the ideologues that are trying to stop any and all real Healthcare Reform. And a reality that will cost the Democratic party votes if they don't address it head on. Part of what has the voters from across the political spectrum furious with everyone in Washington D.C..

We don't need insurance reform... We need Guaranteed Healthcare. 

Why is this man smiling?

In U.S., it's pay more, get less:

"A RELATIVE BARGAIN: George Mercieca, a worker at a GM assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario, shows off his Canadian health care card. GM spends an average of $1,385 a year on medical bills for hourly workers in Canada. An American autoworker costs the company about $5,000, but studies show Americans are no healthier than their foreign counterparts."

He is smiling because he has a great job with better medical benefits than most Americans could ever hope for under our failed healthcare for-profit system. The kind of job that Connecticut, and the USA as a whole, can not realistically hope to attract under our current system as it eats up more and more of our GDP, making it unaffordable to consider the entire USA as an option for locating needed jobs.

If you do not believe me than ask yourself "what does the manufacturing industry have to say about this?" (Answer below the fold...)