No matter what I keep hearing, whether you are for health-care reform or not, I am tired of hearing the Republicans whine about the use of reconciliation to pass the pending health-care legislation. From Medicare, to Regan's tax cuts, to etc, etc, reconciliation has been used time and time again to pass things that affect just as much. Bob Shrum (the Democrats perennially losing war horse) had some prescient things to say on the matter:
The Republican opposition to reconciliation—passing the health bill without facing a filibuster—is transparently cynical for a party that has used the process, from Reagan to Bush II, to reshape the tax code and redefine the role of the federal government, which, unlike health care, constitutes not one-sixth but close to one-quarter of the entire economy.
