Senate sees way forward on funding bill [Amendment to Strike]

The Hill ^ | September 19, 2013 | Alexander Bolton

[Cincinatus' Wife]

......... Reid’s first move would be to schedule a vote to end debate on proceeding to the House continuing resolution. This would require 60 votes. Republican senators would vote to proceed to the bill because it would including the language to defund ObamaCare.

Then he would fill the amendment tree, defining what amendments could be considered in relation to the House legislation.

Reid would be sure that one of the pending amendments is a so-called “amendment to strike,” which would allow him schedule a future vote on stripping the language defunding ObamaCare and prioritizing debt payments.

A Senate Democratic aide characterized the amendment to strike as a substitute amendment that would allow Reid to replace the House language with a “clean” proposal to fund the government beyond September.

“It would be a substitute amendment,” the aide said. “There’s just a bunch of stuff we’d want to get rid of.”

Then Reid would schedule a vote to end debate on the House continuing resolution and proceed to final passage. This vote also requires 60 votes.

Republicans are expected to support this cloture vote because the legislation would still include language to defund ObamaCare.

“It doesn’t seem to make much sense to vote 'no' on a bill that contains the defund-ObamaCare provision,” said Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas). “I don’t know anybody in our conference who’s for ObamaCare, so I think they’d vote 'yes' to get on a bill to defund it.”

After this second cloture vote has passed, the pending amendments can be approved with a simple majority vote. At this point, Reid could strike the language defunding ObamaCare and prioritizing debt payments without having to rely on Republican votes. He could strike the language with Democratic votes alone...........

[RKBA Democrat]

I want to change my answer: do both.