Opinion: Healthcare poll: Budget reconciliation, or start over from scratch?

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The Times’ editorial board will weigh in later today or tomorrow on whether Democrats in Congress should use the budget reconciliation process send a healthcare reform bill to President Obama’s desk, or attempt to achieve some kind of consensus by giving in to Republicans’ calls to start from scratch.

The timeline imposed by starting over would be, well, long, subjecting the legislation to another round of filibuster threats and other tactical maneuvers to wring more concessions from Democrats or kill the bill entirely. Reconciliation, however, would remove the filibuster option. Here’s a short primer on reconciliation by the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein; a much more exhaustive report for the more wonkish (or masochistic) among us can be found here.

What are your thoughts? Should the party in power have some, you know, power? Or should Congress and the Obama administration start over from scratch? Take our poll, leave a comment or do both.

-- Paul Thornton