Look, the Rethugs are "headed for the fainting couch" (as Steve Benen put it daintily) over this self-executing rule that the House is contemplating.
Understand that if this bill had been passed in regular order as a conference report, exactly the same situation with respect to the underlying Senate bill would have applied: the Senate bill would NOT be voted on separately by the House, only the AMENDED conference report would be voted on.
And the only reason that the Dems are even having to use this analogous, if slightly arcane, mechanism here is because the Rethugs will not let them do anything in the Senate, elections and consequences be d***ed.
Since that is all I had to say, I will include some other good material below.
First up, an excellent graphic providing perspective on Reconciliation in the recent past, showing how the lie is given to Rethug-fainting-couch drama about Reconciliation-is-Armageddon talking point du-jour (actually passe now, since it is being replaced by SelfExecutingRule-is-Armageddon meme):
Next up is Steve Benen with an excellent swatting of the emerging meme; he links to a MediaMatters piece that links to a 2006 piece about how the Rethugs were setting records on using the, wait for it, Self-Executing Rule!!! Here are a few key 'graphs from this last link:
When Republicans took power in 1995, they soon lost their aversion to self-executing rules and proceeded to set new records under Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). There were 38 and 52 self-executing rules in the 104th and 105th Congresses (1995-1998), making up 25 percent and 35 percent of all rules, respectively. Under Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) there were 40, 42 and 30 self-executing rules in the 106th, 107th and 108th Congresses (22 percent, 37 percent and 22 percent, respectively). Thus far in the 109th Congress, self-executing rules make up about 16 percent of all rules.
On April 26, the Rules Committee served up the mother of all self-executing rules for the lobby/ethics reform bill. The committee hit the trifecta with not one, not two, but three self-executing provisions in the same special rule. The first trigger was a double whammy: "In lieu of the amendments recommended by the Committees on the Judiciary, Rules, and Government Reform now printed in the bill, the amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of the Rules Committee Print dated April 21, 2006, modified by the amendment printed in part A of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution, shall be considered as adopted in the House and the Committee of the Whole."
The substitute submitted by the Rules Committee did not combine all the amendments adopted by the three reporting committees, as is customarily done. Instead, it deleted two amendments adopted by the Judiciary Committee that would have required disclosure of lobbyists’ contacts with Members and staff, and lobbyists’ solicitation and transmission of campaign contributions to candidates.
It then further amended its own substitute by automatically deleting a third Judiciary amendment requiring a Government Accountability Office study of lobbyist employment contracts.
The third self-executing provision occurs at the end of the special rule and states: "In the engrossment of H.R. 4975, the Clerk shall ... add the text of H.R. 513, as passed by the House, as new matter at the end of H.R. 4975." In other words, the Clerk was authorized to add as an amendment an entire separate bill, in this case, the House-passed legislation regulating Section 527 political committees, and thereby put that issue into conference with the Senate (which has no comparable provision in its bill).
The special rule had other problems since it allowed only nine amendments to be offered out of 74 submitted. Moreover, appropriators were unhappy with the earmark provisions included in the bill. This forced Rules Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) to pull the rule after 20 minutes of debate, followed by a five-hour recess and Republican Conference meeting before the House reconvened and the rule again was called up and narrowly adopted, 216-207.
Bring in the fainting couches!