Quick Fact: Fox & Friends seizes on Breitbart-pushed video to falsely accuse Dems of hypocrisy on "nuclear option"

Fox & Friends airs Breitbart-pushed video showing Dems once criticizing the "nuclear option" to accuse them of hypocrisy

From the February 25 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

STEVE DOOCY (co-host): Anyway, it all comes down to reconciliation.

BRIAN KILMEADE (co-host): Yeah, so reconciliation -- 51 votes all you would need in the Senate, and this thing gets passed, and the American people get a brand new health care bill. Will this be a setup? Show [unintelligible] -- show that both sides have [unintelligible] and nothing can happen. President says my only option is to ask the Senate to pass this with 51 votes. The problem with reconciliation is the Republicans say it's an outrage. It's bypassing the Constitution. It was never intended for that reason. Is that what the Republicans are saying, or is that what the Democrats have already said when the Republicans had the majority? Let's look at this tape, first put together by a website called nakedemperor.com. That's the first time I knew about this website, but here's what they found.

[begin video clip]

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA): The nuclear option, if successful, will turn the Senate into a body that could have its rules broken at any time.

THEN-SEN. JOE BIDEN (D-DE): I pray God when the Democrats take back control, we don't make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.

THEN-SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY): Senate is being asked to turn itself inside-out, to ignore the precedent, to ignore the way our system has worked, the delicate balance that we have obtained that has kept this constitutional system going for immediate gratification of the present president.

[end video clip]

DOOCY: And the present president is doing this bipartisan thing today, reaching out to the Republicans, and if it doesn't work, it sounds like they're going to use the reconciliation. Harry Reid has said it's still on the table, and that's why we are showing the irony that the Democrats were saying, you can't do reconciliation. It's just wrong. It's not the spirit of the Congress.

FACT: Democrats weren't talking about reconciliation

Clips of Democratic senators -- who weren't discussing reconciliation -- lifted from Breitbart.tv. The clips of Feinstein, Biden, and Clinton that Fox & Friends aired were first compiled in a video created by the conservative website Naked Emperor News and promoted on Breitbart.tv -- where "NEN videos premiere" -- and Fox Nation. As Media Matters for America noted, they were expressing opposition to a Republican proposal to change Senate rules to eliminate use of the filibuster for judicial nominations -- i.e. the "nuclear option" -- not the use of reconciliation.

FACT: "Nuclear option" was coined by GOP in 2005 to describe a process to change Senate filibuster rules

Lott described proposal to change filibuster rules as "nuclear option." The term "nuclear option" was coined by former Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), one of the leading advocates of the proposal to change the Senate rules on filibusters for judicial nominations. After Republican strategists deemed the term a political liability, Republican senators began to attribute it to Democrats. As Media Matters noted, at the time, many in the news media followed suit, repeating the Republicans' false attribution of the term to the Democrats.

FACT: Reconciliation is already part of Senate procedure, and Republicans have used it repeatedly

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 repeatedly used reconciliation to pass President Bush's agenda. Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to pass Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts as well as the 2005 "Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act." The Senate also used the procedure to pass a bill containing a provision that would permit oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (The final version of that bill that Bush signed did not contain the provision on drilling.)

FACT: Reconciliation has been used to pass major changes to health care laws

Reconciliation has repeatedly been used to reform health care. On February 24, NPR noted that many "major changes to health care laws" have passed via reconciliation. These measures include COBRA, which allows laid-off workers to keep their insurance coverage, and the State Children's Health Insurance Program.