Dumb and dumber: Senate Democrats Consider Tactic to Push Through Government Health Plan with Simple Majority

If a public plan option becomes law other than in the regular way, and further is done without a full fleshing out, hearings and public discussion and vetting, most assuredly it will be the Democratic Party's death knell in the 2010 midterm elections.

Despite the current talk, I don't think our party is ready to go down that route.

From The New York Times:

Senate Democrats said Sunday that they were fleshing out plans to pass health legislation, particularly the option of a new government-run insurance program, with a simple majority, instead of the 60 votes that would ordinarily be needed to overcome a filibuster.

Democrats have begun to talk openly of using a procedure known as budget reconciliation to pass a health bill in the Senate with a simple majority, assuming no Republican support. To do that, under Senate rules, they would probably need to show that the public plan changed federal spending or revenues and that the effects were not “merely incidental” to the changes in health policy.