We’re a little shaky on the history on this one. How many centuries has Robert Byrd actually been in the Senate? How did he get along with Abraham Lincoln?
Byrd now favors passing ObamaCare via reconciliation, but he opposed it back when the Clintons suggested it. Here’s what he said on the floor of the Senate back on April 5, 2001:
The Democratic leadership pleaded with me at length to support the idea that the Clinton healthcare bill should be included in that year’s reconciliation package. They came to my office on the floor below. President Clinton got on the phone and called me also and pressed me to allow his massive health care bill to be insulated by reconciliation’s protection. He called me on the telephone.
I felt that changes as dramatic as the Clinton healthcare package, which would affect every man, woman and child in the United States, should be subject to scrutiny. I said, ‘Mr. President, I cannot in good conscience, turn my face the other way. That’s why we have a Senate, is to amend and to debate freely. And that health bill, important as it is, is so complex, so far reaching, that the people of this country need to know what’s in it. And moreover, Mr. President, we senators need to know what’s in it before we go there.
He accepted that, thanked me and we said goodbye. I could not, I would not, and I did not allow that package to be handled in such a cavalier manner. It was the threat of the use of the Byrd rule.
Reconciliation was never, never, never intended to be a shield, to be used as a shield for controversial legislation.
Maybe he’s changed his mind. Maybe he’s lost his mind. Maybe he’s just a confused old man. Take your choice.
