Nelson Would Vote for Health Reform Reconciliation

ABC News' Z. Byron Wolf reports: Democrats have been in a health care reform stasis since Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts. Democratic Senators no longer have the votes to pass a new bill. And House Democrats have so thoroughly bashed the Senate version that they don’t want to pass it.  One option is to use the reconciliation process to slam a new bill through both houses or use the same process to pass a fix-it bill for the Senate version, essentially fix the Senate bill in the eyes of House Democrats. Read more about reconciliation here.  So the old math of needing 60 Senators for a health reform bill has become finding 51 Democrats to fix the version they already passed. How’s that for confusing? Two Democratic Senators have already poo-pooed that idea – Sens. Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln. 59-2 = 57. 51 votes would be needed for any sort of reconciliation measure. But today came word that one moderate Democrat would happily support reconciliation. “I’ve been asked about whether I’d support using the process known as reconciliation now. So, I want to make it clear:  If I support a bill, then I will vote for it regardless of whether it takes 50 votes to pass or 60 votes to pass,” Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., told reporters in his home state, according to a transcript provided by his Senate office. “My position doesn't change just because the House or Senate decides to change the process.” Earlier in the process, before Democrats passed their version of health reform Nelson had argued against reconciliation. He called it a “deal breaker” last Spring. In September Nelson said, “people in Nebraska are already concerned that we've been rushing things through, and if we went to some sort of a parliamentary shortcut, I think they would be even more alarmed than they are right now.” But that was before the long negotiating process that procured Nelson’s vote for the Senate version of health reform. He has come under immense political fire for securing a special clause exempting his state from new Medicaid financial responsibilities – a deal he has since worked to undo. Nelson would use the fix-it bill to strip that provision from health reform legislation.