Yesterday, Charles Krauthammer commented on the report that Alan Frumin, the Senate Parliamentarian, said the House must pass the existing Senate health care bill first and Obama must sign it into law before they can move to fix it in reconciliation.
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Transcript
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Well, if it is so, then it is, it's huge news. It means that the mountain that Pelosi has been looking at has become a cliff.
And this is why the House members don't like the Senate bill. They only want to approve it if they're guaranteed it'll be amended. But if the ruling that we heard is actually going to be, is actually the real one, that means they're going to have to accept the Senate bill as is, watch it signed into law, watch a procedure, a ceremony at the White House where the champagne is popped, the backs are slapped, hats are thrown in the air because of the first time in a hundred years you've achieved universal health care; and then expect that after that the Senate will go back and do a reconciliation, which will tear the Senate apart, an unusual procedure, extremely divisive, in order to introduce amendments that the Senate likes, is then going to have to strip out in order to appease the House.
Now, if you believe all of that, you require a suspension of disbelief about what I experienced when I watched Peter Pan at the age of seven. Now the majority of House members are not, are actually adults, and I don't believe any of them will believe that that's going to happen.
There's only a single exit here, and that is if the vice president overrules the parliamentarian, which he can. But if he does that, that's not a nuclear option. That's a thermal nuclear option. That's Krakatoa. That's a hundred megatons. That will be a catastrophe if it is seen that the bill is pushed though by overruling a ruling of the neutral parliamentarian and passing what would otherwise be illegal.
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