Klein also notes that reconciliation is one of the “baroque parliamentary tricks that few understand.” It’s actually quite straightforward. Reconciliation was created to allow senators to rely on a simple majority when passing budgetary items to control debt. It was not created to allow Bernie Sanders to waste unfathomable amounts of money on his socialistic obsessions. A good way to fix this thorny issue would be to eliminate shortcuts that circumvent genuine debate and that allow politicians to shove (often fake) budgetary concerns through with a simple majority. Bring back the normal rules of order and deliberation for all bills and end the madness.

As a contemporary political matter, Klein’s arguments do not make much sense, anyway. It’s Democrats, not Republicans, who are holding back the passage of the reconciliation bill and an array of other agenda items, including gun restrictions and “voting” bills. They would be unlikely to pass even if the filibuster were gone. Then again, some of us believe that the glorious messiness and gridlock of D.C. speaks to the true diversity of American life, a state of affairs that must be torture for the statist and technocrat to observe.

And right now, only a few Democrats stand between preserving norms and destroying them. Let’s hope they don’t fold.