Ah...the "Faux News" deflection.
http://mediamatters.org/research/200908190017
Echoing Fox News' Bill Sammon and Sean Hannity, CNN hosts Anderson Cooper and Kiran Chetry both falsely compared Senate Democrats' potential use of the reconciliation process to pass health reform legislation to the "nuclear option." In fact, the term "nuclear option" was coined by then-Republican Sen. Trent Lott in 2005 to refer to a possible Republican attempt to change Senate filibuster rules, while reconciliation is already part of Senate procedure and Republicans have used it repeatedly in the past.
It isn't a deflection. The "nuclear option" is a specific procedure that is entirely different from budget reconciliation, and the difference between the two is non-trivial. The "nuclear option" - which used to be called the "constitutional option" - is using a parlimentary procedure to declare the fillibuster unconstititional. That would then set a precedent whereby the fillibuster is, in effect, dead in perpetuity. In theory, it can be done any time, in any situation. It has never been done because there is a tacit understanding that doing so would wreak havoc. That's why it got named the "nuclear option."
Budget reconciliation is a recognized procedure, that has already been used, which allows a bypass of the fillibuster for a specific bill, but the requirements for a bill to be amenable to are relatively stringent, and it doesn't kill the fillibuster for all time and for all purposes.
Werepossum has a point in his above comments - which is that if you expand the scope of what sort of bill is subject to reconciliation to a great degree, you may in effect be killing the fillibuster for all time. If the dems are able to set such a precedent with reconcilition for this bill, then perhaps that could be the case. However, using a phrase that has historically applied to an entirely different procedure is just not accurate. It only confuses the issue.
- wolf