During his first year in office, President Barack Obama enjoyed a congressional “supermajority”: Wide enough margins of power in both chambers of Congress that allowed agenda items to pass without Republican support.But when Republican Scott Brown won a special election to fill the seat of the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, the number of Senate Democrats dropped to 59 votes – forcing the Obama administration to pivot the process for the Affordable Care Act to “reconciliation,” which allows bills to pass with a simply majority.Reconciliation, once reserved for strictly financial matters, allowed Obama to pass his landmark health-care legislation without …
