I may well have it wrong myself. Parliamentary procedure is pretty murky…Schoolhouse Rock didn’t cover this stuff in enough detail it seems.
I thought that the Deem & Pass route is meant to avoid the Senate getting in to a reconciliation process. The House does not trust the ability of the Senate to amend the current bill, if signed by the President, because the Republicans can conjure up all sorts of mess to stymie the reconciliation process (which with the way they have been at it these last months seems exceptionally likely). For instance they could offer an infinite number of amendments to make the process go on forever.
As I understand it both houses need to agree on a bill for the president to sign.
If the House amends the bill then it is no longer the bill the Senate passed. I thought this meant the revised bill must go back to the Senate before being given to the president. They basically have to agree to the House changes. If not then Schoolhouse Rock has really failed me.
As far as I understand it, Whack-A-Mole is incorrect. One of the problems is the very things the Dems are trying to avoid, an actual vote on the bill. The deem and pass maneuver allows legislation to move forward without them voting on it. Now, this may be legal, as per the courts ruling in the past, but it runs in direct counter to the spirit of the constitution. The people deserve to know how the representatives we elect into office vote on the issues that come before them. This maneuver allows them to move legislation while hiding their position. And while it might be fine for some minor legislation, doing it on a bill that will effect 1/6th of the economy and, in essence, establish an entirely new right, is sleazy in the extreme.
After posting it seems that Whack-A-Mole has seen the light. HGood for you W-A-M for admitting you were in error.
It was like arguing over the glass being half-empty or half-full and learning by some technical definition it is half-empty. Not that it makes a difference whatsoever.
I don’t know how this is going to play out in the public consciousness, but I don’t really see anything wrong or untoward with this tactic. It’s a bit weaselly, but it’s just a shuffling around of the order of the votes. It’s a tactic that has been used plenty in the past, and even if this is the most sweeping legislation ever to use this rule (which I guess is debatable), so what? It’s just the next step in the direction started when the rule was first introduced.
And given the Republicans absolute reliance on the filibuster option, this is just “back at ya” from the Democrats.
No. The amendment gives the house dems cover. They only voted for the senate bill with the amendments. But, if the senate fails to pass the amendments with reconciliation then the president will sign the senate bill. The house dems still have to trust the senate to pass the fix. So, the fix is not really an amendment but a separate bill. This is why I believe it is unconstitutional to deem the senate bill passed without a recorded vote.
It’ll have a recorded vote - the vote on the amendments. Now, I could easily be missing something but this seems like functionally saying “vote for one, vote for both”, while to the constituency saying “I didn’t vote for that one unamended”.
Again, I think it is perception. I can already see their opponent in the November election saying “you voted for the Senate bill”. I think any explanation would fall on deaf ears (Think “I voted for it before I voted against it”. It may make sense but people won’t see it that way.)
I think that anybody who rebutts with “I voted for it before I voted against it” deserves to lose. “I voted for the amended bill - those Senate Dems may like their pork, but not me!” would be my amateurish recommendation. Presuming of course that reconciliation fails and this even becomes an issue.
Agreed. I think the whole talking point started by Democratic Congressmen that they could vote for the health care bill, without being seen as voting for the bill, is so stupid in underestimating the intelligence of the public. Whether you’re voting for the bill or voting for a resolution that pushes over a domino, releases a mousetrap, knocks over a bowling ball, which knocks down a water bottle, which fills up a bucket to pour into a boot that kicks the bill over the White House, it doesn’t take a genius to see through the member’s position on health care. If you vote for “deem as passed,” you’re voting for the bill.
I don’t think the public’s view of the health care bill is going to fundamentally change one way or another. A good number of Americans know our health care system is a disaster, and a good number are scared of any change. There is very little understanding on either side what is actually in the bill, so that the existence of absence of kickbacks or whathaveyou are not likely to alter the average person’s position on whether they support reform or not.
You know what is unreasonable? The fact that we have an entire political party absolutely committed to prevent any kind of honest change and debate on an issue of this magnitude. Congressional Republicans have already admitted they want to stop Obama from doing anything. Given that opposition, I do not begrudge the Democrats from using any kind of sneaky tactic to pass this bill. I want them to pass it, I want them to be able to plausibly say they didn’t vote for it, I want them to ram it through Congress without any Republican touching it because we essentially do not have an opposition party as much as a seditious threat.
There is no way that some of these people will vote for the bill as long as Dems are in charge and a Dem is in the White House. Thus their objections should be ignored, and every trick in the book used to pass this bill. If it takes physically locking Senators out of the chambers, I’m all for that too. I don’t really think people’s worries about how this bill is passed is as relevent as what it does to help the American people. It’s a good bill, so it should be passed, opposition be damned
Er, I’m thinking that when we throw out democracy to get health care, we’re going to find babies stuck in the drain.
It’s just a damned shame we don’t have Democrat simple majorities in the house and senate and a democratic president in the white house. If we did, I’d support any machinations necessary to counter antidemocratic machinations from the oppositions, as long as it merely sticks to legal machinations and only goes as far as restoring the constitutiutionally mandated majority rule for passing laws.
Just because you don’t like the way the votes are going to go, doesn’t mean democracy has ended.
The House is going to vote this weekend on whether or not the health care bill gets approved. They are doing it in a chickenshit sort of way, but it is a vote, it is constitutional, and it is democracy.
Does it scare you more what I said, or a real life party is doing it’s best NOT to govern and doing anything it can to prevent what will turn out to be a very good bill for the majority of Americans?
I think the latter scares me more than if the things I said were to come true.
