micheknows wrote:
This has to do with the way they are planning to insert a healthcare bill into another bill tomorrow and push it directly through the Senate and House with no debate, no discussion, even no reading of the bill.
Don’t panic!
A lot of “information” on this comes from people who don’t understand the rules and the reasons for doing this as an amendment.
Any amendment proposed in the Senate, to any bill, faces a cloture vote. It would take 60 votes to attach this health care bill to any other bill.
And, any bill in the Senate, once all of the amendments have been handled, faces a cloture vote on the completed bill (with amendments). So, it takes an additional vote of 60 votes to bring the amended bill to a floor vote.
This is about circumventing part of the Constitution, and also about cutting the House out of the whole process, and establishing the Senate as a place that can make new tax laws.
I posted a couple of responses with more details about this over on another thread. Check http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2360718/posts?page=21#21 for more info. There are two posts there explaining the procedures a little better.
Make no mistake, the whole amendment thing is devious. But it is about circumventing the Constitution, and circumventing the authority of the House of Representatives.
I think they really want to get it through the Senate by Thursday, but at this point, any single Senator could hold it up that long by simply objecting to everything and forcing recorded votes at every step. I think they have already blown the October 15th deadline. Passing this by budget reconciliation with 51 votes wasn’t going to get them what they wanted, either.
| From the desk of cc2k: |
So I was thinking tomorrow was the day to take off from work and spend the day on the phones to these Senators - esp the few Dems who might vote against this nightmare.....
Am I too early on this?
(can’t take but so many day off you know...)