The Concern Troll Leaps Into Action

The 'reconciliation' approach would be very, very bad for Democrats! (Funny, reconciliation didn't bother the Republicans when they were in the majority.) And as Alexander knows full well, Americans continue to strongly support health care reform, despite Republican efforts to pack town hall meetings with their strident shills:

Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) on Tuesday said a partisan approach to health reform this fall would "wreck our healthcare system and wreck the Democratic Party," raising the stakes of a go-it-alone strategy that Democratic leaders are considering.

At 59 votes with the passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy (Mass.), Democrats have said they will consider the use of a legislative tactic called reconciliation that could allow chunks of health reform legislation to be passed with a simple majority of 51 votes, instead of the 60 that normally would be required to overcome procedural obstacles.

Alexander said that town hall meetings last month demonstrated most Americans are opposed to reform and that Democrats should heed the message.

"The intensity on this across the country is something that I haven’t seen before," Alexander said. "If they thought that one party was going to try to ram through a proposal that would increase the debt, there’d be a minor revolution."

Alexander also predicted such a strategy would yield a "Swiss cheese" approach because the Senate parliamentarian would be forced to prohibit votes on large sections of the bill that may be considered irrelevant to deficit reduction.