Political Irony

The Washington Post published a long op-ed piece by Senator Orrin Hatch, titled “Reconciliation on health care would be an assault to the democratic process”. We know the drill — he calls budget reconciliation an “arcane budget procedure” that Obama wants to use to “ram through” a bill that does those nasty things you’ve heard all about in the Republican talking points. He also says that its use would not only be “unprecedented” but it would be “against the will of the American people” (I can almost hear the Star Spangled Banner playing in the background). He even claims that it goes against the intent of the Constitution!

There is only one problem. Almost everything he says is a complete fabrication. As has been already pointed out, the Republicans have used reconciliation in order to avoid filibusters four times as often as the Democrats, and the majority of health care legislation in the last 30 years has been passed using budget reconciliation.

Not only that, but Hatch himself has often voted for the use of reconciliation in the past, when it favored Republicans.

Why are Republicans so blatantly lying about the use of reconciliation? They must be awfully afraid of health care reform passing.

UPDATE: As usual, Rachel Maddow says it far better than I did:

UPDATE2: Newsweek has an excellent article on the history of reconciliation. Needless to say, they describe what the Republicans are parotting against reconciliation as “ludicrous talking points”.