Headline: Top Senate Democrat Outlines 'Nuclear Option' Strategy for Health Care
"A top Senate Democrat for the first time Tuesday acknowledged that the party is prepared to deal with health care reform by using a controversial legislative tactic known as the "nuclear option" if Republican Scott Brown wins the Massachusetts Senate election"
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"Then, Durbin said, the Senate could make changes to the bill by using the nuclear option, known formally as "reconciliation," a tactic that would allow Democrats to adjust parts of health care reform with just a 51-vote majority. "We could go to something called 'reconciliation', which is in the weeds procedurally, but would allow us to modify that health care bill by a different process that doesn't require 60 votes, only a majority," Durbin said. "So that is one possibility there."I didn't go to journalism school, but if you say someone "outlines 'nuclear option' strategy", that someone better have utter the phrase "nuclear option". As it happened Dick Durbin didn't use that phrase at all, but instead used the word "reconciliation" that has a very different meaning. 'Nuclear Option' was a phrase invented by Trent Lott in 2005 to describe Republican Bill Frist's plan to override the democratic filibuster without using any legal or legislative precedent (thankfully it never happened). Reconciliation has existed since its procedure was passed through the legislature in 1974 as part of the Congressional Budget Act (USC 641). Both are techniques to override a filibuster, but to conflate them is like claiming that throwing someone in jail is basically the same thing whether or not you have a trial. Like society as a whole, the senate relies on legal precedent to function, and the moment we start flouting the law as Bill Frist tried to do in 2005 with judicial appointment fillibusters, we begin to descent into lawlessness (ironically Frist called it the "constitutional option"). Beyond that, reconciliation has been used regularly by both parties, for instance, by the the republican majority during the Bush Administration to pass tax cuts. How come Fox won't call that the nuclear option?
This all began in August and CNN eventually followed Fox's example. Now that we've swallowed the pill, they're taking things further by actually quoting democratic senators as saying nuclear option when they really said reconciliation.
I'm not the only one who's upset about this issue.
