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With the economy stagnating and Congress bridling at President Richard Nixon’s heavy-handed spending controls, lawmakers in 1974 created a fast-track procedure to help make the tough decisions on rising budget deficits and swelling entitlement spending. Since then, that process — called reconciliation — has been warped for many purposes, including large tax cuts, but never has it been used for the kind of complex policy making that Republicans are trying to do now with health care. And it is showing. (Pear, 7/26)

Senators must endure dozens of policy amendments in rapid-fire succession stretching late into the night, a marathon procedure former New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg once described as “the Senate’s equivalent to Chinese water torture.” Only after the Democrats tire themselves out do Republican leaders get the opportunity to tee up a final vote on some sort of health care proposal, although the end game remains extraordinarily fuzzy at this point. (Hallerman, 7/27)