Collective Conscious

Politico today plays the fair and bal­anced card, quot­ing this lit­tle gem:

[Sen. Orrin] Hatch, one of the longest-​​serving sen­a­tors, said that Democ­rats will try to “bully [Fru­min] and try to get him to make a rul­ing he wouldn’t ordi­nar­ily make.”

I’m glad they chose Hatch to cite for this tid­bit. He’s likely to remem­ber what hap­pened in 2001, when Repub­li­cans fired the pre­vi­ous par­lia­men­tar­ian, Robert Dove, for stop­ping them from abus­ing the fil­i­buster to pass a deficit-​​increasing tax cut. This was after they had already used it to pass their first one by a vote of 50 to 50, with Dick Cheney step­ping in to break the tie. The bud­getary impact of that rec­on­cil­i­a­tion bill can be seen in con­trast with Bush’s sec­ond round of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion tax cuts, and the deficit-​​reducing health care bill at the end:

For shame, Repub­li­can Party. For shame.