"Reconciliation cannot be used to pass comprehensive health care reform. It won't work because it was never designed for that kind of significant legislation; it was designed for deficit reduction"
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Kent Conrad’s line is less a procedural note than a power move dressed up as civics. By insisting reconciliation “cannot” be used for comprehensive health care, he’s not simply describing Senate rules; he’s trying to narrow the battlefield so the votes he doesn’t have become the reforms he can’t be asked to support. The language is absolutist - “won’t work,” “never designed” - the kind of certainty politicians reach for when they want a contested choice to sound like a neutral fact.
The subtext is a warning to his own party: stop looking for a workaround. In the late-2000s health-care fight, reconciliation was the escape hatch for a Senate where 60 votes were a mirage and the filibuster had become a default weapon. Conrad frames that escape hatch as illegitimate, even though reconciliation had already been used for major policy changes. That selective reverence for “design” is the tell. Senate procedures are not sacred architecture; they’re elastic tools, and everyone in Washington knows it. Calling reconciliation “designed for deficit reduction” is a way to police the boundaries of acceptable ambition while sounding like a prudent institutionalist.
Context matters: Conrad was a deficit hawk from a conservative-leaning state, and “deficit reduction” is the moral high ground in budget politics. He invokes it to elevate process over policy, turning a debate about health coverage into a debate about rulebook purity. It’s a familiar Washington tactic: if you can’t win on the substance, try to win on the forum.
The subtext is a warning to his own party: stop looking for a workaround. In the late-2000s health-care fight, reconciliation was the escape hatch for a Senate where 60 votes were a mirage and the filibuster had become a default weapon. Conrad frames that escape hatch as illegitimate, even though reconciliation had already been used for major policy changes. That selective reverence for “design” is the tell. Senate procedures are not sacred architecture; they’re elastic tools, and everyone in Washington knows it. Calling reconciliation “designed for deficit reduction” is a way to police the boundaries of acceptable ambition while sounding like a prudent institutionalist.
Context matters: Conrad was a deficit hawk from a conservative-leaning state, and “deficit reduction” is the moral high ground in budget politics. He invokes it to elevate process over policy, turning a debate about health coverage into a debate about rulebook purity. It’s a familiar Washington tactic: if you can’t win on the substance, try to win on the forum.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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