Let the Reconciliation Begin

If Thursday's Blair House Health Care Summit proved anything, other than that Democrats and Republicans can, if cameras are on them, talk civilly to each other, it is that substantive health care reform will not be passed this year without the parliamentary maneuver known as the reconciliation process.

But since it's another parliamentary procedure — the threat of a filibuster — that's keeping an amended reform bill from coming to a vote in the Senate, let the maneuvering begin.

The Senate bill is imperfect, but reform is too important to the economy and the well being of too many Americans to let this moment pass. "Starting from scratch," as one Republican after another advocated on Thursday, means giving up.

Americans are getting a useful civics lessons in the arcane rules of representative democracy. Reconciliation applies to budget votes, not policy issues, and requires approval by a simple majority. But it can be and has been used on policy issues, by Republicans as well as Democrats, to sidestep the rule that requires 60 votes to cut off debate on a bill.

Reconciliation could be a political minefield for Democrats, and not just the 59 Democrats in the Senate and those — like Missouri's Robin Carnahan and Illinois' Alexi Giannoulias — running for open seats.

It will be perilous for Democratic House members, too.

Many Republicans shamelessly have distorted the health care issue — Death panels! Socialism! Government takeover! — and will have no shortage of money and help from the insurance and health care lobbies.

Health care is a hideously complex issue, so complex that the temptation is a reflexive "no." Democrats must find ways to explain that when reform becomes law, even Americans who today complain loudest and longest are going to acknowledge that it was a good idea all along.

Reform will provide health care security. It will begin to hold down costs. It will ease the damage that out-of-control health care costs are doing to the economy.

This is one of those "profiles in courage" moments that determine what kind of country we live in. If Democrats can't make that case before November, they don't deserve to hold office.

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