Sen. DeMint Goes "Nuclear" With The Truth

Today, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) joined the chorus of Republicans launching dissonant attacks on the budget reconciliation process.  In a column titled "Going 'Nuclear' On Freedom," the far-right lawmaker accused Democrats of "plotting to set aside customary procedure by using parliamentary dirty tricks" to pass health care reform:

As a matter of raw partisan politics, President Barack Obama and the Democrat Congress may have no choice but to resort to the "nuclear option" to pass their increasingly unpopular plan to take over American health care. In the teeth of intense public opposition, congressional Democrats are having a hard time cobbling together votes on their own side of the aisle.  [...]

So the media are now reporting that Democrat leaders, bent on taking over health care at any cost, are plotting to set aside customary procedure by using parliamentary dirty tricks to ram through their multitrillion-dollar health care takeover, whether the American people like it or not.

DeMint apparently doesn't know much about the body in which he serves.  Or he's lying.    

For starters, the "nuclear option" does not refer to the reconciliation process.  Rather, the phrase originated during the Bush administration when Republicans wanted to change the rules of the Senate in order to end successful filibusters of some of the president's judicial nominees.  As Jeffrey Toobin wrote in the New Yorker, "The magnitude of this transformation of the rules is suggested by the nickname it has acquired within the Senate: the 'nuclear option.'"

By contrast, Democrats aren't talking about changing the rules at all.  Reconciliation was authorized by an Act of Congress over thirty years ago.  According to ThinkProgress:

Under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the Senate may pass a law bringing federal tax and spending levels in line with a previously enacted budget resolution by a simple majority vote.  This process allows senators to bypass the filibuster when enacting health reform provisions that impact the federal budget. 

Indeed, Republicans routinely used reconciliation to advance their conservative agenda under President Bush.  DeMint personally voted for at least two bills that Republicans passed using the procedure.  But he doesn't seem to remember that now. 

In other words, "customary procedure" allows for reconciliation.  And DeMint is the one who doesn't want to play by the rules.