My column from this morning's Roll Call explains why reconciliation, a subpart of the congressional budget process, and a sub-subpart of the legislative process, isn't what we should be arguing about.

Can We Please Stop Talking About Reconciliation?

My fellow Roll Call columnist Norman Ornstein was one of the authors of a truly excellent chart on reconciliation that appeared in the New York Times on Sunday.

Pete's post below on reconciliation and healthcare reform takes a far too strict look at what could and could not be included in a health care reform bill considered under reconciliation rules.

Pete's correct that the primary consideration is whether a provision would have an impact on the federal budget.  He's also absolutely, positively, no-doubt-about-it correct that the Byrd Rule was created to prevent "extraneous" (that is, having no impact on the budget whatsoever) provisions from being included.  I recall one of the things that got Senator Byrd (D-WV) so exercised was the inclusion of a major change in the broadcast fairness doctrine, which had no budget implications of any kind, in a reconciliation bill.

But Pete's very strict interpretation of the rules for what qualifies as an extraneous provision is..well...far too strict.

Leave aside the broader health care reform debate and what the Democrats want out of this process.  Why are the Republicans not using their elected offices to advance policies that serve their own supporters?

Their main voting constituency is middle class (or higher) white families in the suburbs, particularly the husbands and fathers in that constituency.  They don't face the raft of problems that others do in our society.  But one big problem that they do face is that something beyond their control happens to someone in their family.  Medical catastrophes have to rank high on that list -- they certainly do for me.  If a member of my family were to be afflicted with an expensive medical condition, then I am financialy viable only for as long as I stay insured with my current employer.  Put simply, there are gaps in private insurance markets that leave such families exposed.  This is plain to see and should be the focus of Republican efforts on health care reform, along the lines that I have discussed over the past six months (most recently here).

If you had told me in November 2008 that Massachusetts would be represented by a Republican in the Senate, I would have had you committed.  And yet that has what has occurred.  From my admittedly biased viewpoint on the periphery of the Boston media market, I thought Martha Coakley ran an arrogant and nasty media campaign.  For example, I'm not sure what she hoped to accomplish by interrupting my football playoffs with ads attacking a guy I had never heard of and blatantly overstating her own accomplishments.What she should have done was to simply say that she was a firm vote in the Democratic camp on the key issues of the day; principally, extending the benefits of more universal health care to the rest of the nation. 

What the nation got, instead, was something other than a firm vote in that camp.  But don't overstate what this means.  President Obama does not now find himself negotiating directly with Senator Brown over his health care agenda. 

Some will say that the new deal reached on the tax on so-called Cadillac health care plans is a giveaway to unions -- and they won't be wrong -- but in isolation it is a step toward "the least worst way to do the wrong thing," which is what passes for success in Washington these days.  Buried in The Washington Post article by Lori Montgomery and Robert D. Shear:

The deal cut Thursday would raise the value of policies subject to the tax to $24,000 for families and $8,900 for individuals. Plans with significant numbers of women or older workers would receive an additional break, as would workers in high-cost states and high-risk professions. Dental and vision plans would be exempt starting in 2015. And workers with collective-bargaining agreements and government employers would be exempt until 2018, giving labor leaders time to negotiate new contracts.

Forgive me for coming a little late to this party.  Honestly, I needed to test my thoughts before posting what you see below.

Here's my bottom line: I have no problem with C-Span requesting that it be allowed to cover what is currently expected to be behind-closed-doors negotiations on health care reform.  But C-Span made a huge mistake in releasing or leaking it's request or by not understanding that it was making the request in a way that was virtually guaranteed to be leaked by others.  In doing so C-Span inserted itself in the political process and inappropriately and quite unfortunately became part of the story.  You expect this from Fox; you recoil when it's done by a supposedly neutral observer like C-Span.

Following up on Pete's post, I am far out of my depth trying to understand this "ping pong" procedure to get around a conference committee.  Fortunately, Keith Hennessey is on the case.  Read it and weep (again) for our two-party democracy.

I'd like to address two comments on recent posts -- one by Michael and one by Jonah -- regarding the "tax" on "Cadillac" health plans.

As a matter of tax policy, I favor eliminating the exclusion of health insurance premiums from taxable income.  So does Jon Gruber.  I think economists can agree on this because of the reasons indicated in the original articles and comments -- it promotes spending on health care that may be wasteful.  We could finance quite a lot of expansions in coverage with a chunk of the $200 - $250 billion in foregone tax revenue.  We would also make the tax code more progressive in the process.

What I am criticizing in these posts is a proposal to selectively eliminate it for the most expensive health insurance plans without regard to whether the expense is due to the design of the plan or the expected health expenditures of the insured population based on their health status.

In The Washington Post today, Jonathan Gruber of MIT defends the provision in the Senate bill to lessen the tax advantages of health insurance plans with premiums of more than $8,500 for singles and $23,000 for families.  I mentioned in my post on the Senate bill that I was not a fan of the "Cadillac tax."  Gruber acknowledges but then ignores the main criticisms of this provision:

But there have been numerous criticisms of the Senate financing. Perhaps the strongest is that some insurance plans will be "unfairly" burdened. For example, firms with older employees may have higher insurance costs not because their plans are more generous but because the employees themselves are more expensive to insure.

Here are two quick hits today about how resources are going to be divided up among the states.

First, the Census Bureau gives us a preview of what population growth may look like in the 2010 census with last week's release of the latest annual population numbers.  According to this news summary:

In Nevada, for example, the population has risen 32.27% since the 2000 Census, more than any other state in the past decade. Nevada currently has three seats in the House and will almost certainly pick up another as a result of its population growth.

On the other hand, large states that have grown slowly over the past nine years such as Ohio (1.67%), Pennsylvania (2.64%), New York (2.98%) and Michigan (3.13%) could lose at least one seat each.

The future of the so-called Sand States - California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida - is still in question, though. The rapid rise of many of these states through the early part of the decade has been curtailed by the housing crisis.

Second, this New York Times report explains how states that have already expanded their eligibility rules for Medicaid may see less reimbursement from the federal government than those states that will do so only as part of the health care reform that eventually gets signed into law.