Tom Crawford requests that I post his "email that points out the falsehoods in David Brooks' column" that I posted.

Yesterday my friend Tom Crawford of Capitol Impact wrote to me:

I noticed that you posted an excerpt earlier this week on your website from a David Brooks column in the New York Times on the plans by the U.S. Senate to use the reconciliation procedure to possibly achieve final passage of the healthcare bill. I wanted to point out that Mr. Brooks is using false information in several places to bolster his argument against reconciliation.

Brooks wrote (and you posted on your website):

"Until recently, the Senate leaders couldn’t just ram things through on party-line votes. Because a simple majority did not rule, and because one senator had the ability to bring the whole body to a halt, senators had an incentive, every day, to develop alliances and relationships with people in the other party."

That statement is not true. There are instances on record -- verifiable, historical record -- where the Senate leadership was able to get a bill passed on a party line vote. I cite as just one example the 1993 vote on President Clinton's deficit reduction act. The vote was 50-50, along party lines, and Vice President Al Gore broke the tie to pass the bill. That was a party line vote and it happened 17 years ago.

Brooks also wrote (and you again posted on your website):

"Reconciliation has been used with increasing frequency. That was bad enough. But at least for the Bush tax cuts or the prescription drug bill, there was significant bipartisan support. Now we have pure reconciliation mixed with pure partisanship."

That also is not true. The budget reconciliation process was used six times between 1980 and 1989. It was used four times between 1990 and 1999. It was used five times between 2000 and 2009. It has been used zero times since 2010. This data has been published by the New York Times -- which also runs Brooks' column. The peak period for the use of the reconciliation procedure was in the 1980s. Brooks is making a false statement when he says reconciliation has been used with "increasing frequency."

Brooks is also making false statements when he writes that reconciliation has been limited to bills with "significant bipartisan support." President Bush's 2003 tax cuts passed the Senate on a 50-50 vote, with Vice President Cheney required to cast the tie-breaking vote. Two Democrats joined with the Republicans on that vote: Zell Miller, who by that time had become a Bush advocate and was not really a Democrat anymore (although you might disagree with me on that point) and Nebraska's Ben Nelson. That's it: one real Democrat and one Democrat in name only. Sid, you cannot honestly describe that as "significant bipartisan support."

Brooks' statement that Bush's Medicare prescription drug bill was passed through the reconciliation procedure is also false. The prescription drug benefit was not passed through reconciliation. It was passed with a normal Senate vote.

This is not a matter of me disagreeing with Brooks philosophically. This is an instance where he is making statements that are not true, and the falsity of these statements is quite easily proven through a cursory examination of official records. David Brooks is certainly entitled to his own opinion. He is not entitled to his own facts. What he wrote -- and what you posted on your website -- is as bogus as if he had written, "Franklin Roosevelt was an ineffective president, as shown by his inability to win a third term in office. Roosevelt's defeat in 1940 was a key factor in America losing World War II to Germany and Japan." If Brooks wrote a column stating that, you would laugh at him for making such an absurd argument based on falsehoods. But that is precisely what he did in the New York Times column you cited.

As a service to your readers, Sid, I hope that you will post this email that points out the falsehoods in David Brooks' column.

Thanks for listening. I hope all is well with you down in Coffee County.

Regards,
Tom