Bill Clinton Meeting Today With Senate Democrats

"If I were the parliamentarian, I'd find the argument that tax cuts are unambiguously budget-related is a lot easier to buy than a government health option, especially if that insurance option has to charge premiums and basically operate the same as private insurance companies."

You seem like a defeatist, though, or else an advocat for the Republican position.

I don't shinola from this, but Wiki says that the Parliamentarian's role is strictly advisory, although it adds, highly deceptively, that the advise is "almost always followed." When the Republicans didn't like the Parliamentary advice they were getting from Robert Dove in 2001, though, they had Trent Lott as Majority Leader fire him so they call install a Parliamentarian whose advise on reconciliation was a hundred times more amicable to their political strategies. So they followed the advice until they got advice that didn't serve them and then they got a more pliant Parliamentarian. Thus, this position has a recent history of hanky-panky writ large. And the man who gets to fire him is Leader Reid. There may be workarounds that suit the Parliamentarian better than the dry way you put it, and accomplish the same thing. Which workarounds staffers have been working on for months. And the Parliamentarian only advises the Presiding Officer, who will be a Dem. controlled by Reid. And if the Repub's want to appeal, they can try the Supreme Court which will not grant cert. as the Senate makes its rules, the Presiding office has authority, and perhaps since a political question which it cannot resolve is presented. So the Repubs can tea-bag, which they will do anyway.