“I predict that anyone who chooses to goose-step behind Nancy Pelosi to PRESERVE ObamaCare will be primaried...”
Sure. Vote for repeal. I’m game for that. Wonderful idea.
Voting for Obamacare Lite, however, is a vote for yet another give-a-way from working Americans to taking Americans.
If you support legalized theft from working Americans, then you don’t belong here.
In the interests of putting some things to bed:
1) No, Mike Pence can’t ignore the Parliamentarian. This would be the mechanism in effect of making all bills budget reconciliation bills. That obviously is just a way to kill the filibuster in the Senate. It would not get even 10 votes. That’s why this proposal has already been dismissed as a non starter.
2) You can stop filibuster in ways not requiring 60 votes? No. You can’t. People are saying this via the Two Speech Rule. Senators are limited to 2 speeches per legislative day on a given subject. So glory be, you can require them to talk, they’re only allowed to talk twice and you shut them down without 60 votes! Bullshit. Completely wrong.
Senators are allowed to offer amendments to a bill. They can then give two speeches on each amendment. A minority can propose zillions of amendments. You CAN limit the number of amendments (NO senators like being limited in amendments) but then if you do that, senators can raise points of order and give two speeches on those. No limit on points of order.
Here’s discussion of this from 2010, when the Dems were raging at the power of the GOP filibusters.
Bottom line: THIS IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. If there were a way around 60 votes that does not constrain to Reconciliation, the Dems would have used it. There is nothing new under the sun in all this. The GOP is not going to discover any genius maneuver. The Dems would have discovered it in 2010 if there were.
The Filibuster is what spared the country from a single payer Canada NHS style healthcare plan. Only the Filibuster and Scott Brown stopped that. You will not find even 10 votes to kill the Filibuster for non USSC issues.
Patton said: “Lead, follow or get out of the way!”
I expect our leaders and leader wannabes to know where they are — so they can avoid leading us, lemming-like, over an unseen cliff.
So I am very interested to learn if YOU know where we are:
1. Democrat Senators can use their filibuster “power” to block a simple “repeal-only” bill passed by the House. Therefore, such a bill would be futile and a waste of time.
2. Democrat Senators lose that “power” if the House passes a “Reconciliation Bill”.
3. A Reconciliation Bill is LIMITED with respect to what it can do. It can repeal or replace funding and spending items, but it cannot NOT change “policy”. Any attempt to change policy would enable a Democrat filibuster to occur. See #1. Therefore, it is not possible to get all the changes to ObamaCare that we want in a single “Reconciliation Bill”.
If you understand those three points, then I think we can have an adult discussion of real-world alternatives. And discuss which changes to Obamacare could be bundled into the Part 3 legislation that Senate Democrats would be afraid to reject.
Otherwise, it’s all “puppies” and “rainbows”, isn’t it? No matter how loudly you may scream about the sanctity of a “repeal-only” bill, no one is listening....