President Barack Obama, according to Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orzag, is ready to use 50-vote Senate procedural rules to short-circuit filibuster attempts against his energy and healthcare reform programs. Orzag said on ABC that Obama was looking at using the Senate’s budget reconciliation system.
He added that an alternative was to form a commission, similar to the military base closure commission, and then vote its recommendation up or down, without amendment.
I deliberately did NOT put “GOP/Republican” in the URL link, because a few Democrats — Robert Byrd springs immediately to mind — could well decide to support a filibuster on the energy program, depending on just how “green” it is on carbon dioxide emissions.
Also, Byrd is a stickler for both Senate rules and for Constitutional checks and balances, as he made clear last year. Between that and the fact that Obama certainly had some hand in easing him out of the Appropriations chair last year, means that the White House is probably playing with some charge of dynamite unless it’s already working directly with Byrd.
That said, this may be the clearest indication yet that Obama plans a different governing approach than we've seen in the past, and a more hands-on one.
As for how serious Orzag is about the commission idea, I don't know. That may have been nothing more than a political tactics sop, to somebody. In reality, unless the commission is structured, on the two issues at hand, to avoid Senate GOP obstructionism, I do not see how it adds much to the tactical angles.
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