Almost:
Yes, but in the normal run of procedure, those bills are dead when that particular Congress is over. They don’t automatically pass if the Senate doesn’t approve them before a certain time limit.
That’s what this new thing is all about…Cantor either really thinks or wants the Republican electorate to think that such bills just automatically become law if the Senate refuses to take them up. Since I find it hard to believe that someone who’s been in government as long as Cantor has doesn’t know how it actually works, I more than suspect that the whole thing is a grandstanding waste of time, money, ink and paper.
The problem is that a certain demographic of voters that I won’t mention specifically, believes everything that they come up with.
This is why they are shameless.
It is like Eric Cantor is trying to outsource the job of the Senate to the House!
Here’s what it looks like is actually happening. You have HR 1, the budget bill. It’s been passed by the house but not the senate. Then you have Cantor’s bill, HR 1255, “The Government Shutdown Prevention Act”, which says that if no budget gets passed by April 6, HR 1 will become law. This has also, as of now, been passed by the house but not the senate, but if it’s passed by the senate and then signed by the president, then it will become law, incorporating HR 1 by reference, and I don’t see a constitutional problem with that part of it. There’s another part of it which would stop the salaries of congressmen and the president if there’s a shutdown, and that’s arguably unconstitutional.
Does anything make you think it’s GOING to pass the Senate? Because if they don’t want to pass HR1 directly, why would they pass a law that allowed HR1 to come into effect indirectly? Given that scenario and motivation, I think this bill is grandstanding by the House GOP.
It’s obviously not going to pass the Senate and is grandstanding, but given that a lot of what Congress does is grandstanding, and also that Cantor said before the beginning of the session that he’d be doing a lot of grandstanding (do you remember that “We’ll have a vote on a bill you decide on every week, whether we think it’ll pass or not”), it’s not surprising.
And grandstanding can be an effective political tactic.
is this why weiner read the kids book on the floor? something about a congress mouse?
i was wondering why he was waving it around and reading.
perhaps mr cantor missed some of schoolhouse rock episodes.
Okay, so why is Cantor doing this?
To say, “Look at those Democrats, who refuse to pass our budget and are willing to shut down the government even after we’ve begged them and begged them not to. They’ll still get paid if the government is shut down and federal workers don’t get their salaries, and they’re apparently fine with that. Well, we’re not, which is why we’ve proposed that if the federal workers don’t get paid, then neither does Congress or the President, because if we don’t pass a budget, we’re just not doing our job.”
Or something to that effect.
I think he is simply paying lip-service to the Tea Party, without whom the Republican party would be politically insignificant now.
Also, I’m not so sure he knows how a bill becomes a law, he’s not big on facts and logic and all that other PC type stuff.:rolleyes:
Again, he knows how a bill becomes a law.
All right, so now all he has to do is get another bill passed that says that, if the Senate doesn’t stop it, HR1255 becomes law. And then another bill to get that bill passed unilaterally, and so on. It’s [del]turtles[/del]bills all the way down!
Sure. This is, I think, exactly correct. It’s no different than the “deem and pass” business.
Are they going to “deem” it signed by Obama, as well?
An inside-the-Beltway person I know literally could not believe this was happening–thought there had to be an April Fool’s joke in here somewhere.
Is there a version of HR 1255 introduced in the Senate?
Yes, it was sent over to the Senate yesterday.
I would like to see the Senate’s response to being legislated away.
The House of Lords allowed it in 1911.