Reconciliation: Not A "Nuclear Option"

Brendan Nyhan reviews uses of reconciliation from 1980 to 2008. Ezra Klein has more:

NPR's Julie Rovner has a fantastic article explaining that the reconciliation process has actually been used for almost all major pieces of health-care legislation passed over the past 20 years. COBRA -- which stands for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, but has come to mean the much-beloved program that lets you keep your health insurance when you lose your job -- was done in reconciliation. The Children's Health Insurance Program was done in reconciliation. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which is the legislation that tells hospitals that take Medicare and Medicaid that they have to at least screen any patient who enters the emergency room, regardless of insurance status, was done through reconciliation. Welfare reform, which disentangled Medicaid from welfare, was done in reconciliation.