PASADENA--President Obama and Congressional Democrats are finally moving forward with reconciliation of health care bills to pass watered down reform; which is necessary to keep the United States from being uncompetitive in the world economy and bankrupting the U.S. Treasury, businesses and millions of independent contractors (the fastest growing segment of the workforce). The President is coming to the table late but his delayed leadership is crucial to getting the bill across the finish line. The President should channel LBJ and start breaking some recalcitrant Blue Dog Democrat balls to make sure it happens. Senators Lieberman and Nelson should be pulled from powerful committees and given joint chairmanship of the Potomac Polliwog Committee. As for the foot-dragging Republican minority, they should be frog marched out of their plush offices and over to the Washington Mall.
"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," Representative Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican told Reuters recently.
But Ezra Klein, noted in a recent Washington Post column that "Reid is not talking about rewriting the bill or passing the whole thing through reconciliation. He's talking about passing a small package of fixes through reconciliation so that the House and Senate bills come into alignment."
"This is actually the sort of situation reconciliation was designed to address, as Brookings' Henry Aaron explains... Budget reconciliation is called "reconciliation" because it's supposed to speed the, well, reconciliation of the differences between two budget bills. That's exactly what's left to do with the health-care reform bills, which were indeed part of the 2010 budget and whose passage is expected in the 2011 budget."
Better late than never, Mr. President.
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