Where do we stand on health care reform? Well you’d have a tough time answering that accurately if you’ve been following the story in the press lately. Health care reform has, despite Mitch McConnell’s protestations, already passed the House and the Senate. All that is left to do is for the House to adopt the Senate bill and the Senate to pass relatively minor changes through the budget reconciliation process.

The GOP, with a big assist from your “liberal” media, has been doing their best to hide the fact that the Senate has already passed a bill. Instead they conflate the  simple majority vote on reconciliation measures as akin to passing the entire reform package through reconciliation. Now whether or not the Senate should ever operate at a 60 vote minimum is a point for debate. For our purposes though it’s important to remember simply that the Senate has already passed reform. So when McConnell says things like this,

Now they’re suggesting they might use a device which has never been used for this kind of major, systemic reform.

He’s either stupid or he’s a liar - I’ll leave it up to you the reader to decide. Functionally they’re equivalent.

So as we find ourselves lurching towards a final vote on health car reform amidst increasing hyperbole from Republicans allow me to paint a hypothetical for you:

Imagine that as the House comes to vote on the final bill it’s apparent that Democrats are going to be short. Democratic leadership panics and the 15 minute voting window is frozen for several hours so that Democrats can twist arms and scrounge up those needed votes.  Nancy Pelosi bribes a Democrat right on the House floor to support the bill. Democratic leadership threatens holdouts with the loss of financial support for this fall’s election. Imagine that the Obama administration in a desperate attempt to scuttle negative information on the reform legislation illegally suppresses data from a non-partisan governmental agency.

What would be the reaction of Congressional Republicans? How would Glenn Beck respond? How long until Tea Partiers marched on Washington? Who would be the first Democratic politician to have articles of impeachment drawn against them?

As Ezra Klein helpfully reminds us today, the hypothetical I described above actually happened - when Republicans passed the reform package known as Medicare Part D in 2003. Don’t just take liberal Ezra Klein’s word for it. Former Reagan staffer Bruce Bartlett has referred to the Part D vote as,

… one of the most extraordinary events in Congressional history.

Read the entire Bartlett piece for an accurate description of GOP hypocrisy on the substantive issues but more importantly for the time being remember that appalling episode as the Republican’s continue their duplicitous assault on health care reform in the coming weeks.

Why would Republican’s resort to outright bribery and thuggery in order  to pass a budget busting reform package? Because they understood full well that the American public would not remember how the bill was passed, the public would simply remember that Republicans passed a bill to help those on Medicare pay for their prescriptions. Sure enough, in the 2004 elections the GOP expanded their majority in the Senate by 4 seats and in the House by 5.

Today Democrats are following a perfectly legitimate and legal process. They should remember the lengths that Republicans went to in 2003 and the success that the GOP had in 2004 and feel good about their moral and political position as they move to pass health care reform.