Quotable: Senator Robert Byrd on his OWN Byrd Rule for Reconciliation

Responding to an editorial by the Charleston Daily Mail, Senator Robert C. Byrd, author of the so-called “Byrd rule” for reconciliation that has been used by opponents of healthcare reform to excoriate the reconciliation process, gave his blessing to the use of reconciliation for merging the House and Senate healthcare bills and passing reform. In so doing, Senator Byrd killed another Republicant talking point. This is what he said, in a letter to editor of the Daily Mail:

“[A] bill structured to reduce deficits by, for example, finding savings in Medicare or lowering health care costs, may be consistent with the Budget Act, and appropriately considered under reconciliation.

With all due respect, the Daily Mail’s hyperbole about “imposing government control,” acts of “disrespect to the American people” and “corruption” of Senate procedures resembles more the barkings from the nether regions of Glennbeckistan than the “sober and second thought” of one of West Virginia’s oldest and most respected daily newspapers.”

What’s that popping sound I hear . . . Could it be the air released from exploding Teabagger, Republicant, and Beckista heads?

Hmm . . . would citizens of the virtual paranoididiotautocracy of “Glennbeckistan” be considered “Beckistas” or Beckistanis?