Abuse Of Power: The White House has threatened to ram through radical health reform by abusing the budget reconciliation process. That would mean a new chapter on corruption for the history books.

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer told reporters Monday that Democrats, ignoring the will of the American people, will try to pass a big government health reform bill through the "nuclear option" of reconciliation. In so doing, they'd be circumventing a Republican filibuster in the Senate and need only 51 votes.

In response, House Minority Leader John Boehner said the president had "crippled the credibility" of the health "summit" planned for Thursday "by proposing the same massive government takeover of health care based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected."

He said the bill "doubles down on the same failed approach that will drive up premiums, destroy jobs, raise taxes and slash Medicare benefits" and called the meeting "a Democratic infomercial."

"Using reconciliation," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell charged last week, "would be an acknowledgment that there is bipartisan opposition to their bill."

But it would actually be something far more arrogant. The reconciliation procedure was hatched out of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 to limit filibustering on budget bills — in other words, to prevent fiscally conscious senators from curbing Congress' big spending ways.

That's bad enough, especially now that the president and the Democratic Congress have decided to spend America into the black hole. But nothing in the 1974 budget act, or the amendments made to it since, can be construed as applying to the thousands of pages of legislation to revamp one-sixth of the economy.

New regulations on health insurance companies, to name just one aspect of the bill, have nothing to do with spending or revenues, the debt limit or any other budget-related matter. Using reconciliation on health care is as absurd as using it to send a constitutional amendment to the states for ratification, or to pass a treaty, or to confirm a Cabinet secretary or Supreme Court justice.

It would be more honest for President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to announce the Senate's rules will now be changed: No more filibustering.

Republicans would be wise to avoid this Thursday's "summit" until they get a pledge that the president will oppose the use of reconciliation. Nothing as big as this should be passed without a national consensus, and polls show that the more Americans know about the Democrats' proposal, the more they hate it.

Sen. Scott Brown's seemingly impossible election in Massachusetts last month was the voice of the people shouting "No!" to passage of the Democrats' health care revolution. If the White House insists on defying the American people, the Loyal Opposition has a duty to take their side.