No more apologizing, bowing and scraping, or welfare to those countries who hate us. We need to reinstate the draft, and give welfare leaches 6 mos. to get a job then completely cut off their benefits. No more federally subsidized $1.00 a month telephone service or any other unnecessary freebees. The states can do what they want to help or enable their own. We need to reinstall defensive sites with our world allies, and announce to the world what an accident the last year and half was, and take heed that the United States of America is back in business.

Yes, you are completely correct on the “cloture” vote of 60 in the Senate being only a Senate procedural rule. It was enacted in 1917 under Wilson as a two thirds majority vote, but was changed to 60 votes no matter how many was in attendance in 1975.

However, you seem to be taking Lankford out of context in your next argument. It appears to me that he was talking about every American having the right to a doctor or about the health care issue in general and not about using reconciliation. If it is about the right to a doctor (which hits at the heart of the health care issue), he is absolutely correct. Whereas Article 6 in the Constitution addresses the idea of the right to a lawyer, nowhere does the Constitution address the right to a doctor. Though one might use Article Nine to support this idea, Article Nine was written to actually do the opposite and declare that the federal government was to keep it hands out of this kind of business.

This may be a little thing, but it bugs me when people take things out of context just to put others down or for political gain. You put quotation marks around what you say that Lankford said, but I can find no where on this page where he said that exact quote. It is simply what you think he meant to say. This is true deception and spin. I think it had quite the opposite effect on me than you intended.

This is not true. The Constitution does not provide for the 60% vote requirement. This is a Senate procedural rule, one that members of both parties have proposed changing when they have been in power.

You then note that, in considering using reconciliation (ie, a simple majority vote) for the Senate to approve the health care reform bill that “I know that pesky Constitution gets in the way of so many good arguments for Democrats. ”

If that’s the case, it likely got in the way of Republicans as well on the approximately 21 instances where they have used reconciliation to force a “simple up or down vote” in the past 30 years.