Chart: Your Handy Guide To GOP Senators Who Backed Reconciliation

For your reading pleasure, we've drawn up a comprehensive chart detailing which GOP Senators who are currently in office have voted for measures passed via reconciliation over the last 20 years.

Over the weekend, GOP Senators argued en masse that if Dems press forward with plans to pass health reform via reconciliation, it will effectively destroy what remains of our fragile experiment in democracy. As Lamar Alexander put it, such a move would "end the Senate."

But as many have pointed out already, reconciliation has been repeatedly used in the past, even to pass health-care-related measures. So we thought it would be useful to tally up how the GOPers currently inhabiting the Senate voted on them. The highlights:

* Mitch McConnell and Orrin Hatch, two leading voices against the Dem use of reconciliation, along with 19 other current GOP Senators, voted for the 2001 Bush tax cuts, which passed by a simple majority (58-33) via reconciliation.

* McConnell, Hatch, NRSC chief John Cornyn and 21 other current GOP Senators voted for the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, which accelerated the Bush tax cuts and added new ones. This passed by a simple majority via reconciliation — 50-50 in the Senate with Dick Cheney casting the tiebreaking vote.

rest at http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/senate-republicans/chart-your-handy-guide-to-gop-senators-who-backed-reconciliation/