Maybe people want to give me a coronary on this, but Nate Silver passes along the current — and so far completely unsupported — conventional wisdom on budget reconciliation and health care.
The extent to which the [health care] bill remained intact would depend upon the rulings of the obscure Senate Parliamentarian, and going through reconciliation would cause mayhem on the Hill with somewhat unpredictable political consequences.
Yet again, I see no reason to believe this. And in fact, Nate proves it. His link for this assertion is to the Wikipedia entry for the Senate parliamentarian, which never claims that the parliamentarian makes Byrd Rule determinations. In fact, it says:
The role of the parliamentary staff is strictly advisory; the Presiding Officer is in no way required to follow their advice, though they almost always do so.
That means one thing and one thing only: the person making the determination as to whether the health reform package can be enacted whole under reconciliation is Senate President Joe Biden. His rulings can be overturned by the whole Senate, but a motion to do can be filibustered, and it can also be laid on the table with 51 votes.
There are good reasons for enacting health care reform through reconciliation (viz. GOP obstructionism) and good reasons against it (viz. it will only last 5 years). But chaos resulting from the Senate parliamentarian is not one of them.
