Van Susteren misuses "nuclear option," allows Gregg to call reconciliation "arcane"
Fox News' Greta Van Susteren falsely described the budget reconciliation process as the "nuclear option," and allowed Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) to refer to it as "arcane." In fact, the "nuclear option" actually refers to a procedure that would be used to change Senate rules, while reconciliation requires no such rule change and was used many times by Republicans during the Bush administration, with the support of Gregg.
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Van Susteren repeatedly advances reconciliation misinformation
Van Susteren repeatedly claims reconciliation is the "nuclear option." On the January 20 edition of Fox News' On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, Van Susteren teased an interview with Gregg about the reconciliation process by stating, "Next: Is the nuclear option coming? And by the way, what is the nuclear option? If you don't know, you need to sit right where you are because you're about to find out. Republican Senator Judd Gregg is next, and he's going to explain it to you." She introduced the interview by asking, "Is a nuclear option coming?" and asking whether Democrats can "push through legislation with only 51 votes." Later in the interview, she claimed that "the slang" for reconciliation is "nuclear option." During the segment, Fox News aired the caption, "Reconciliation process is also known as 'nuclear option' ":
Van Susteren allows Gregg to claim reconciliation is "arcane." From Van Susteren's interview with Gregg:
VAN SUSTEREN: What's reconciliation?
GREGG: Well, that's a good question. This is a very arcane Senate procedure. It's part of the budget process, and it essentially says that with 51 votes, you can pass bills which make the budget work.
"Nuclear option" was coined to describe the process to change Senate filibuster rules
Lott described proposal to change filibuster rules as nuclear option. The term "nuclear option" was coined by then-Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), one of the leading advocates of a proposal to change the Senate rule that requires a three-fifths supermajority to invoke cloture and end a filibuster. After Republican strategists deemed the term a political liability, Republican senators began to attribute it to Democrats. As Media Matters for America noted at the time, many in the news media followed suit, repeating the Republicans' false attribution of the term to the Democrats.
Reconciliation is already part of Senate procedure, and Republicans have used it repeatedly with Gregg's support
Reconciliation process is part of congressional budget process. The budget reconciliation process is defined by the U.S. House Committee on Rules as "part of the congressional budget process ... utilized when Congress issues directives to legislate policy changes in mandatory spending (entitlements) or revenue programs (tax laws) to achieve the goals in spending and revenue contemplated by the budget resolution."
Republicans -- including Gregg -- have repeatedly used reconciliation to pass President Bush's agenda. Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to pass President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts as well as the 2005 "Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act." Gregg voted in support of using reconciliation for each of those bills.
Despite his description of reconciliation as "arcane," Gregg "publicly favored" the procedure in 2005 to pass oil drilling in ANWR. As Media Matters documented, a March 31, 2009, Washington Post article reported that "while Gregg has sharply attacked Democrats for considering the use of reconciliation, which would allow them eventually to pass legislation to reform health care with 51 votes rather than the normal 60 that would be needed to avoid a filibuster, Gregg publicly favored such a provision as Budget Committee chairman in 2005 as part of an attempt to push through a GOP-backed proposal to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge." Gregg was one of 51 senators who voted against striking language allowing the reconciliation process to be used to open up the refuge from the budget resolution and introduced a reconciliation bill that, as originally introduced in and passed by the Senate, included a provision to open up the refuge to drilling. (The bill as enacted did not contain such a provision.)
Fox News routinely misuses "nuclear option"
Fox Nation, Fox News personalities routinely invoke the "nuclear option" while discussing reconciliation. Fox News personalities like Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, Bret Baier, and Van Susteren have all previously falsely compared reconciliation to the "nuclear option."
They are 100% reactive to what others do!!!!!
This is not rocket science, yet you don't know this? Why am I not surprised?
Whenever someone in the media misuses the terms, MMFA will point it out. If you want them to stop pointing it out, then you'll need to get YOUR SIDE to stop misusing the terms. It's pretty simple, actually!
When Republicans use reconciliation, it's governance.
Now I get it.
If the Democrats use reconciliation, taxes will go up. Do you really get it?
It was record spending that caused record deficits.
EXACTLY and you know who did all that spending, jose2? The Bush administration and his rubber stamp Congress. The out of control spending of the LAST administration created the majority of the current deficit. The budget for fiscal year 2009 ran from October 2008 until October 2009. Guess who proposed that budget? A hint . . . it wasn't the current president.
If you were NOT upset by the obscene spending of the prior administration, then you are not a conservative and you have NO idea what is going on around you. Bush took a budget surplus at the beginning of his first term and turned it into the largest deficit we had ever had and that budget deficit didn't include the cost of two wars, one just, the other not. All of the spending for those two wars were carried "off budget." Obama has included their cost in his budget and has trimmed unnecessary cost out of the budget.
And, yes, tax cuts did help increase the deficit. A government which was spending at the rate that the Bush administration and its Congress was CANNOT cut revenue at the same time. If you spend more money than you take in . . . you end up in a HUGE HOLE.
I was only saying that tax cuts did not cause the deficit. Both parties are guilty of spending us into oblivion.
The problem is both parties have been infiltrated by Progressives who want to grow government. The health care industry is something like 1/6 of the total economy and would go a long ways to growing government if the nuclear option is used.
Obama promised not to raise taxes on those making under $250K/year. The health care legislation is a stealth tactic for raising taxes without making it look like he did.
You're ignoring Bush's creation of an entirely new, massive bureaucracy with the Homeland Security Department.
And according to the CBO, the proposed new health care entitlements will actually have a positive effect on the deficit.
The CBO came to their deficit calculations based on a ponzi scheme that moves costs between programs and withholds benefits for several years.
If the Progressives/Democrats opt for the nuclear option, it will take one year for all the new taxes to show up in the form of health care compliance.
Then any Republican bozo can promise to repeal the health care / public option and win.
As for the rest of your garbage . . . turn off Fox and hate talk radio. There is no "ponzi scheme" going on. Normal accounting function to move money between accounts when there is a surplus in one and a deficit in another.
Reconciliation is NOT the "nuclear option." It is a legitimate Senate procedure. The Constitution requires only a simple majority to pass legislation. This ridiculous 60 vote cloture rule must be abolished by the Senate. It is destroying our country.
Because you don't agree with me I'm part of some central group?
I guess that means you're done with facts and logic so you have to resort to discrediting me.
Yes, you are. When you parrot the same talking points that a group does, it generally makes you a member of that group.
I didn't discredit you, you did it to yourself when you failed to demonstrate any critical thinking skills and a failure to recognize and apply history to current issues. Everything that you have said is so disconnected from reality and entrenched in either selective memory or revisionist history that you are so far in the forest that you can't see the trees.
The obvious solution is for the federal government to stop all spending entirely.
There is one thing that is certain however, I trust the government more than the private sector to provide me with certain services because I know that they will, unlike the private sector that sees life as a dollar amount and treats their services to us as a profit making process.
BTW-I meant that as an insult, your comment wasn't very clever.
Social Security was the first big entitlement followed by Medicare. Both were used to enable massive deficit spending just as health care would be the next plundered entitlement.
If the government cannot borrow from Social Security or Medicare and health care doesn't pass they'll borrow from the Chinese.
Somewhere you have to draw the line. We are not too far away from where Mexico was in the mid '90s where 1000 pesos became one peso.
In a few years, a $20 trillion deficit could magically become $20 billion.
I'm not in favor of borrowing from the Chinese or the SS. I'm saying if you pass health care you will be enabling the government to continue business as usual.
My message is to lower taxes and lower spending. There is nothing circular in this statement.
I'll make it simple for you.
No to government mandated health care that is a tax hike in disguise, probably the biggest one in history.
Bye bye.
It would appear that it's all about semantics and the failure of our news media to report news instead creating it.
Abolish the 60 vote cloture rule. It INVITES divisiveness and obstructionism.
In my thinking there needs be a Constitutional Amendment to require such a thing as mandating the purchase of a health care policy.
They got a way with saying driving is a privilege and you need insurance but how can they say existing is a privilege?
If you lower taxes and get more revenue, then create new entitlements based on bogus cost estimates, you blame the tax cuts?
That is your hypocrisy.
And by the way, how do you get more revenue by essentially charging less? That's backwards logic.
Government is hell bent on going in debt and dragging down everyone else with them. You see them screaming that banks are not lending. Most normal people want to get out of debt, not into debt. The healthy businesses are the ones that grow at sustainable rates with little or no debt.
It is not government's responsibility to create jobs. Their job is to provide for a secure and stable environment where jobs can be created by the free enterprise system. When the government interferes with the free market they create uncertainty and that impedes job creation.
While the talking points for health care legislation are noble, Government is doing more to destroy the quality of life than to enhance it.
20% of $100,000 is more than 30% of $50,000.
Maybe 10% every month is optimum. If the government mandates 10% twice a month, maybe you die.
There is a limit to how much blood sucking can be done where you reach a point of diminishing returns.
It might take years to realize that you have become so weak that even if you drop back to 10% per month you die.
Maybe now you can only give 10% every two months and you remain weak. Maybe you need one year with no blood sucking to get back to an optimum of 10% per month.