“Reconciliation,” as the Liberals in Congress are calling it relative to the potential for using it to pass Obamacare, is what used to be called the Nuclear Option back when Republicans were threatening to use it to get President Bush’s judicial nominees through the advise and consent process.

The Liberals are threatening to use it now to pass Obamacare while a few years ago they were aghast at the thought of using it for anything other than the strict budget process usage it was designed for – by Liberal Racist Senator Byrd, incidentally.

Here’s what they said:

---

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID:

NOW: 23 February 2010 – My Republican friends are lamenting reconciliation.  But I would recommend for them to go back and look at history.  They should

stop crying about reconciliation as if it’s never been done before.  It’s done almost every Congress, and they’re the ones that used it more than anything else.

THEN: May 18, 2005: Mr. President, the right to extended debate is never more important than the one party controls Congress and the White House. In these cases the filibuster serves as a check on power and preserves our limited government.

THEN: MAY 18, 2005: No, we are not going to follow the Senate rules. No! Because of the arrogance of power of this Republican administration.

THEN SENATOR BARACK OBAMA:

THEN: April 25th, 2005 at the National Press Club – A change in the Senate rules that really, uh, I think would change the character of the Senate, uh, forever. [snip] Uhhh, and what I worry about would be th-th-that you essentially still have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply majoritarian, uhhh, absolute power on either side, and that’s just not what the Founders intended.

THEN SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON:

THEN: May 23rd, 2005, on the Senate floor: So this president has come to the majority here in the Senate and basically said “Change the rules! Do it the way I want it done,” and I guess there just weren’t very many voices on the other side of the aisle that acted the way previous generations of senators have acted and said “Mr. President, we are with you, we support you, but that’s a bridge too far. We can’t go there. You have to restrain yourself, Mr. President.”

THEN: MAY 23, 2005: “You’ve got majority rule and then you have the Senate over here where people can slow things down where they can debate, where they have something called ‘the filibuster.’ Eh, you know it seems like it’s a little less than efficient.” Well that’s right. It is. And deliberately designed to be so.

THEN: MAY 23, 2005: The Senate is being asked to turn itself inside out — to ignore the precedent, to ignore the way our system has worked, the delicate balance that we have obtained that has kept this constitutional system going — for immediate gratification of the present president.

SENATOR CHUCK SCHUMER:

THEN: May 18, 2005: We are on the precipice of a crisis, a constitutional crisis. The checks and balances which have been at the core of this republic are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances which say that if you get 51% of the vote you don’t get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing. It’s almost a temper tantrum.

THEN: May 23, 2005: They want their way (banging podium) every single time! And they will change the rules, break the rules, misread the Constitution, so that they will get their way.

SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN:

THEN: May 18, 2005: The nuclear option, if successful, will turn the Senate into a body that could have its rules broken at any time by a majority of senators unhappy with any position taken by the minority. It begins with judicial nomination, next will be executive appointments, and then legislation.

THEN: MAY 18, 2005: If the Republican leadership insists on forcing the nuclear option, the Senate becomes, ipso facto, the House of Representatives where the majority rules supreme and the party in power can dominate and control the agenda with absolute power.

THEN SENATOR JOE BIDEN:

THEN: May 23, 2005: This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power. It is a fundamental power grab.

THEN: May 23, 2005: I say to my friends on the Republican side: You may own the field right now, but you won’t own it forever, and I pray [to] God when the Democrats take back control we don’t make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.

SENATOR CHRIS DODD:

THEN: MAY 18, 2005: (shouting) Why have two chambers? What were the framers thinking about 218 years ago? They understood, Mr. President, that there is a tyranny of the majority.

SENATOR MAX BAUCUS:

THEN: May 19, 2005: This is the way (dramatic pause) democracy ends. Not with a bomb but with a gavel. THEN-SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON

SENATOR ROBERT BYRD:

THEN: APRIL 1, 2005: For the temporary gain of a handful of out-of-the-mainstream judges, some in the Senate are ready to callously incinerate each senator’s — Each senator! Every senator’s! — right of extended debate.  That is what the nuclear option seeks to do.  Minorities have an illustrious past, full of suffering, torture, smear, and even death.  Jesus Christ was killed by a majority.  Columbus was smeared.  Christians have been tortured.

---

Just for the record, I approved of the power of the majority to use the Nuclear Option then, and I approve of the majority to exercise its will now. The filibuster is a Senate Rule, not a law. Rules are approved every Congress.

What I do not approve of is the inconsistency with which these nutjobs cry foul.