An honest-to-God filibuster is starting to look better

When the politics of complex legislation begins to exceed the legislation itself in mind-bending complexity, then you, as a pro-legislation lawmaker, know you're in trouble.

Take, for instance, health care. Did I really just write, "for instance"? Strike that, since health care has been the reigning topic of domestic political/policy consideration for more than 12 excruciating months. What other topic could we possibly be discussing? Jobs, maybe? Pshaw.

Anyway, health care's current political predicament is so complicated, by last week -- which is to say, the second year -- neither politicians nor journalists knew where it stood, procedurally speaking. I repeat: in its second year, "Change's" signature legislation was effectively orphaned, in search of responsible Congressional supervision, roaming about in a sea of Maybes, What ifs, and This and possibly That.

Ponder, for a moment, that the day before the New York Times wrote that "Under the tentative plan sketched by Ms. Pelosi and other Democrats, the House would pass the health care bill approved in December by the Senate," Politico (and both papers were merely reporting what assorted leadership pols were telling them) was writing that "[C]ongressional Democrats ... still hadn’t figured out which chamber would have to go first, the House or the Senate."

Turns out that Politico, with its reflection of wearied confusion, was temperamentally more accurate than the Times, because -- as was reported later, although heaven only truly knows -- there was little chance the House, even to grease the skids of procedure, "would pass the health care bill approved in December by the Senate."

The House would, instead, start roughly from scratch (or so it was alternatively reported, adding to everyone's confusion), which itself was a colossal mind-bender to no less than the Senate's budget committee chairman, Kent Conrad, who in a state of logical bafflement said: "I don't know of any way where you can have a reconciliation bill pass before the bill that it is meant to reconcile passes."

The Senate's finance guy, Max Baucus, concurred, venturing with equal bafflement that "the general rule is, if there is reconciliation, you have to amend something that is passed. You can’t amend nothing," he said.

Actually the issue could be simpler than you thought, Messrs. Conrad and Baucus. Either coerce the ruling you want from the Senate parliamentarian, or fire the old-school fussbudget and find one with a flair for the procedurally creative, as Republicans once did -- you know, sort of like Honduras or Iran might legislate, which of course makes this, our bastion of democracy, so proud.

As an aside, I, as the freshest of greenhorned lads, years ago worked for a state party organization, which belatedly realized it needed a liquor license in a matter of hours for an upcoming social -- always meaning, in politics, fundraising -- event. This acquisition became my charge, whereupon I innocently noted to a party veteran that state law pointedly forbade any such instant acquisition. He smiled at me as though I possessed the intellect of one of Rahm Emanuel's progressives: "The governor won't mind," he curtly noted. "He owns the party, and thus the licensing department. Now run along and go get the damn thing."

Hence, by traditional political rights, reconciliation should, perhaps, not be as "fraught with complications" as Baucus observed. But do let us recall these are Congressional Democrats we're talking about, for whom a resolution honoring motherhood can become politically dicey.

What's more -- that is, in addition to Democrats' inadequacy when it comes to matching, blow for blow, Republicans' procedural ruthlessness -- there does appear to be no way around reconciliation's legislative inadequacies themselves. Namely, "both chambers would have to pass a third bill," Politico reported, "with policy changes that would not pass muster under reconciliation" -- changes to abortion language, immigration language, even insurance-regulation language.

So with reconciliation we would, very likely, be right back to fraught. For as the Times recently reminded us, "Of the 219 Democrats who initially voted in favor of the House measure, roughly 40 did so in part because it contained the so-called Stupak amendment" -- anathema to the Senate.

Change it, and you probably kill more than that, which is another succinct way of saying what Democratic Rep. Jason Altmire said: "I just don’t know where they get the votes in the House."

And just to pile one more complication on this heap of bicameral mush, of the 39 Democrats who opposed the original House bill -- and who otherwise might compensate for the loss of abortion irreconcilables -- 31 come from 2008 McCain-voting districts.

No way, or at least darn close to it. Says David Wasserman, House specialist for the Cook Political Report: "My sense is that for Democrats to pass this bill, they would have to convince several members who are already in serious jeopardy, even after voting no on the first health care bill, to put passage of the bill ahead of their own chances of being competitive in the fall."

Reconciliation, then, becomes as difficult as busting a filibuster -- indeed, it's a political complexity that dwarfs all 2,000 pages-plus of the last surviving health-care bill.