Senate Democrats under Harry Reid, and with the encouragement of President Obama, are expected to push health care reform through the Senate in a process called "Reconciliation" which is actually intended to be used only for budgetary measures. Under Reconciliation, which is now called "the nuclear option," a bill only needs a simple majority of 51 votes to pass.
The Democrats are planning to use this tactic to pass health care because they lack the 60 votes necessary in the senate to close off a Republican filibuster. If they go the route of Reconciliation they would only need 50 votes (plus the Vice-President's tie-breaker)to pass the reforms they are trying to enact.
The amusing irony is that back in 2005 the Democrats were, via filibuster, blocking a number of President Bush's judicial appointments, and the President threatened to use Reconciliation to get them through. The Democrats in the Senate were in high dudgeon. Senator Schumer accused Bush of precipitating a constitutional crisis. Then Senator Biden prayed to God that the Democrats would never do something so low. Senators Clinton and Reid decried the move as an arrogant power grab.
Here, thanks to Breitbart tv and Naked Emperor News, is the video of our august senators declaiming against the perfidy of the Bush administration in 2005:
That was then, of course, and this is now. Now these same people are all (Mrs. Clinton excepted since she's no longer in the Senate and hasn't stated her opinion on the matter) very much in favor of doing precisely what their principles impelled them to so vehemently oppose when the GOP was in power.
If we weren't as charitable as we are here at Viewpoint we might call this rank, cynical hypocrisy, but we are charitable so we'll just call it an astonishing inconsistency.
RLC