This notion is at the most a pipe dream and we must take a serious look at the Senate today. There are a few major obstacles that need to be overcome.

Can it be included in reconciliation?

I have seen a lot of liberals throw out the word like it is some instant magic bullet, but it’s far from it. Reconciliation is generally used to affect existing programs and/or laws. Creating a public option would be something new and I can’t find when that has occurred before. Some might point to the Bush tax cuts, but in reality that was nothing more than altering the existing tax code.

A decision to use reconciliation isn’t ultimately up to Harry Reid. It’s not even up to a Senator. Instead the final say of if we could use it or not lies in the hands of one man , Alan Frumin, the Senate Parliamentarian. He and he alone decides if the rules of the Senate would allow something that creates a new, massive government program to be included in reconciliation.

It’s all about timing

Even if this idea passes the hurdles above we still have to consider timing. Reconciliation must be used on expense appropriation bills so there isn’t that much of an opportunity to use it. If this is the route Harry Reid and President Obama are hoping to go then they must start it the minute the current bill is passed. Any delay would be fatal to the measure, and given the health care fatigue the Congress and nation as a whole is facing, the odds of that happening are about the same as you or me hitting the lottery.

2010 or bust

The Democrats hold a solid majority – one that hasn’t been seen in decades. That isn’t going to be the case come 2011. Simply put we have a bunch of Democratic Senators who are in real trouble in the polls, and these are almost all people who would support this measure. They include Gillibrand, Specter, Dodd and even Reid. The main one we could lose, Lincoln is actually ahead in the polling right now.

So if those 4 lose, we are left with 56. We need 50 votes to pass reconciliation, and we will still have Senators who have been dead set against the public option – Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Kent Conrad, Max Baucus, Tom Carper and Mark Pryor. That would leave us with 46 votes – 4 shy of the needed 50. Like we have heard time and time again during the debate, the math isn’t there.

After 2009, who knows when we would have a chance at this again. Chances are we won’t see it for a generation. Like wise with the current state of health care reform putting off so much of the base, we are facing a bigger threat of having a Republican majority in one or two of the houses in 2012, and if the Republicans actually ended up taking over again and this bill doesn’t do 110% of what it’s promised, then we really risk seeing the current bill removed by a Republican controlled Congress.