The real nuclear option: How health care could end

Fake nuclear option, meet the real nuclear option.

Republicans’ repeated talk of reconciliation as a “nuclear option” in health-care fight is a case of mistaken identity. The press, too, has incorrectly referred to reconciliation as a “nuclear option.” The use of reconciliation to fix another bill is within the law and has plenty of precedent.

The real nuclear option — the destruction of a filibuster in the Senate by a simple majority — is far off in the health-care fight, in process terms if not on the calendar. And were that point reached, it would go down as one of the most dramatic legislative and political fights in U.S. history.

Here’s how it would work: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have to overcome incredibly complex obstacles to get the original Senate bill passed through the House.

If that happened – and it’s far from a sure thing – the House would start work on a reconciliation bill that made some changes to the Senate bill.

After reconciliation passed out of the House, the legislation would move to the Senate, where several procedural questions would confront it — namely, does it have to come out of committee or can it go straight to the floor? — that would determine how fast it reached the floor.

Once on the floor, the reconciliation legislation would be given 20 hours for debate, according to the law, a parliamentary expert told The Daily Caller.

But Republicans could use procedural delay tactics to hold up the bill for a few days by offering a series of amendments. There is precedent for this as well: In 1995 Senate Democrats held up a vote for 59 hours through delay tactics before Republicans could end debate, according to the Senate library.

To end such a stalemate, however, Democrats might be tempted to do the unprecedented: overcome a filibuster and essentially change the Senate rules through a simple majority of 51 votes.

This is the same “nuclear option” that was proposed by former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, in 2005, when the Bush White House was frustrated by Democrats blocking its judicial nominees.

Frist argued that because the Constitution gives the Senate “advise and consent” powers over presidential nominations, the body’s obligation to fulfill that duty could be used as justification for eliminating the filibuster in this area. Frist called it the “constitutional option.”

Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, led a group of 14 senators — seven Republicans and seven Democrats called the Gang of 14 — who blocked Frist from taking this action. Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, was one of the lawmakers who said destroying the filibuster would destroy minority rights in the Senate.

Graham, during a TV interview on Sunday, said that if Democrats were to use the true nuclear option “it would be catastrophic for the Senate.”

“The minority’s rights would have been overcome by … rank partisanship at a time when the bill itself, the process led to it wasn’t so good,” Graham said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“Please don’t do this. Just please,” Graham said to Sen. Evan Bayh, the Indiana Democrat who appeared with him on the show. “I will work with you to find a smaller bill that the American people feel more comfortable about.”