As the unwieldy mess known as the Democratic health insurance reform bill proceeds through Congress, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders have signaled their intention to use “budget reconciliation” to clear away hurdles that parts of the bill might encounter under normal Senate rules. That in turn has introduced Americans to a procedure most of us blissfully knew little about till recently.

Definition: Budget reconciliation is a procedure crafted in 1974 to discourage filibustering so that contentious bills designed to reduce the deficit can pass more readily. In this case, the House would by design pass the health care legislation approved by the Senate last year, then approve a series of fixes. The Senate would then finalize the legislation by approving these fixes on a simple majority vote rather than by the usual super-majority of 60 votes. Then health care legislation would head off to the White House.

Not surprisingly, the lessons about budget reconciliation in recent weeks haven’t been pretty. Only last week, U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, wrote a column for The Washington Post insisting reconciliation was never intended for “substantive legislation” unless the legislation had broad bipartisan support. Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. fired back in his own column, asking if the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 weren’t substantive, considering they gained approval only under the budget reconciliation rule, hiking the deficit by $1.7 trillion. Even then, he noted, the 2003 tax cuts only won approval because Vice President Dick Cheney broke a 50-50 tie in the Senate.

Fox News got traction by airing old clips of Obama as a senator, angrily railing against the very same budget reconciliation process. Example: In 2005 he and other Democrats fought changes in the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families welfare program. “A vehicle designed for deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility has been hijacked to facilitate reckless deficits and unsustainable debt,” he thundered at the time.

Enough. Let’s agree that the budget reconciliation rule has been abused and misused regularly by both parties (and especially Republicans) as our nation’s leaders have become more and more partisan. Certainly the tax cuts of 2003 were rammed through using the budget reconciliation process, and for that Republicans deserve yet another award for hypocrisy. Yet, we wonder: How does Obama’s decision last week square with his fiery rhetoric five years ago?

Our point: Regardless of abuses of the past, this bill and its amendments are simply too controversial, too costly, too important and too disrupting in the lives of ordinary Americans to be passed using some little-known, 36-year-old parliamentary rule for which it was not intended. And just because Republicans abused the procedure doesn’t make it right for Democrats to abuse it now — not if Obama was truly serious in 2008 when he talked about changing the way our leaders governed.

If Democrats are going to resort to such gimmicks to pass legislation of such enormity, Republicans can be excused for resorting to their own bag of procedural tricks, including offering an unlimited number of amendments and dragging out the process.

It would be nice if a few lawmakers respected for bipartisanship such as our own Rep. Chet Edwards could take to the floor and appeal for an end to all this. But this is hardly an era for political courage, and it’s seldom appreciated by party leaders. Our president could stop this madness if he wished, scrap a bad bill and bring accord. Instead, he seems determined to pass his idea of health care reform and bag a trophy in the name of his presidential legacy — even if it rips our nation apart and sends his party into what could prove a well-deserved exile from power.