Rahming Speed!

Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, raised some eyebrows a year ago when he said "Never let a serious crisis go to waste, it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." Rahm and I might differ on alot of points but I'd say he nailed it on the head with that one. FDR used the Great Depression to pass huge entitlement spending never before thought of before he entered office and long after the crisis is over we are still living with the repercussions. Emanuel knows that cracking the door to nationalized healthcare is enough to set us on the path to a single-payer system in which the government is ultimately responsible for the healthcare of 300 million Americans.

What Emanuel did not count on was a national backlash in the form of disruptive townhall meetings, populist anger and ultimately the TEA party. The election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts gave the Republicans their 41st vote in the Senate and effectively killed healthcare by demolishing the Democrat's filibuster-proof supermajority. So that's the end of that, right? Radical healthcare reform was defeated from the same seat that it's most ardent proponent, Ted Kennedy, used to occupy. A spectacular example of the anger and mistrust at the federal government's overreach was smacked down in the bluest of blue states. But like a bad zombie movie, healthcare reform is back from dead and it doesn't look any prettier now.

Reconciliation, a Senate rule that allows budgetary measures to be passed with a simple majority, has now been put on the table. Referred to as the nuclear option by some, reconciliation is a little used rule that has only been utilized 13 times since 1990. It has never been used on anything this large or monumental which would change a fundamental part of American life. The use of reconciliation is almost always opposed by the minority party as it decreases their power and circumvents the filibuster. The Democrats went on record against the filibuster when Bush was in office:



But as politics go, now that they are the majority party, they once again love reconciliation. But this isn't merely a political football to be passed back and forth, it is a crucial check on government. Bush was using the option to enact a tax cut and give people back more of their paycheck, Obama is using it to nationalize 1/6 of the nation's economy over the popular will of the people. Although reconciliation may make sense in some cases, the Democrats are not only "nuking" the Republicans but the over 50% of the American people who oppose the bill. They are not merely overriding a filibuster but the American people. They are even "nuking" their own colleagues in the House who are threatening to kill the bill because of its support for publicly funded abortion. Nancy Pelosi waves off the objections of Republicans by stating that a bill can be bipartisan without bipartisan votes even while invoking the nuclear option to disenfranchise Republicans.

The American people are showing uncanny tenacity to have followed the process for this long and still be engaged. Ever since last summer the Democrats have been pushing this bill and they are being more ardently opposed every day. Congress's approval rating is now 10% and still they press on. Clearly the American people are not allowing Rahm and his cronies the opportunity to do things they couldn't before. If Congress passes this bill, they will ultimately pay the price. Opening the door on reconciliation before an election in which virtually all pollsters say the Democrats will lose seats might be a mistake they will eventually regret. If the healthcare bill is passed by reconciliation it can be repealed by reconciliation and since the benefits do not occur until 2013 but the taxes start right away, it may even be politically expedient for the Republicans to do so.