Posted on 12/10/2014 5:54:23 AM PST by cotton1706
The House of Representatives is a large body with diverse opinions. Without structure, nothing could get done. In order to both have debate and amendments while also not dragging processes on forever, legislation brought to the floor of the House of Representatives is accompanied by a rule.
That rule sets out the parameters for debate, timeframe for debate, and amendments to the underlying legislation. Legislation rarely goes to the floor of the House of Representatives without a rule. Killing the rule, which is voted on before the legislation, kills the underlying legislation.
Often, members of congress will vote in favor of the rule to get legislation to the floor of the House of Representatives, but then vote against the legislation itself. They enable the legislation to get to the floor, but are often promised that once the legislation gets to the floor, there will be enough votes from the other party to pass it that these members can vote no.
It is a con job. Members of Congress vote for the rule to ensure legislation gets to the floor. The votes are then lined up to pass it without those members’ votes. But for them, the legislation would have died. And now they can say with a straight face they opposed it even though, had they opposed the rule, the legislation would have died.
The House Republicans are going to do this with amnesty. They have loaded up a piece of legislation that is almost two thousand pages long. The legislation will spend a trillion dollars and will fund President Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty. There are most likely not enough Republican votes to pass it because it betrays Republican principles.
But John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi have enough Democrats on board to pass it that it does not matter.
(Excerpt) Read more at redstate.com ...
“The keystone of Obama’s strategy is a government shutdown. And as president, he cannot be prevented from doing it, by any Congress which refuses to be a rubber stamp.”
Your right. Obama is the matador and a government shutdown is his cape. Now why should the Republicans play the part of the bull? We all know how the bull fight ends, don’t we?
“You seem to advocate making sure your party comes out unscathed.”
No. I’m advocating that the Republicans waste their energies initiating fights they cannot win.
/johnny
Are you kidding? First of all we know “smarts” has nothing to do with it. Second, every republican is taking blame for the shutdown BEFORE it even happens.
Yeah, good suggestion.
The best suggestion in fact.
But, of course, our Reps still must also be held responsible if they re-elect Boehner Speaker.
Instead of this years long bill the R’s could pass a short CR until the next congress comes in.
No shutdown unless the Dems obviously cause it.
I’m not really interested in a shutdown, I’m interested in conservatism. The Republicans are just using the anti-shutdown talk as a diversion so they won’t have to do ANYTHING conservative.
Right now they are just “Grubers”. Lying to us to get one more lesser-evil-vote out of us.
Yes, I know all about switching votes between cloture and actual bill so the reps can lie to us about their vote. But trying to kill bills through the rules vote is less effective since, per the article, you have Dem yeas anyway there. At least on the final vote you should have a bunch of Dem nos, which means that many fewer Repubs you need to also vote no.
Obviously, yes, we want as many noes as we can get, and as often. I just think, given politician math, it’s much easier to get the noes on the main vote instead of the rule/cloture where everyone and their mother usually votes yes.
Yes, we do. But Congress can take its time, keep its eyes open, and just push rather than charging. Then when Obama tries the footwork, watch the feet rather than the cape.
There is no need to get any act together in January, since this action funds Obamacare and amnesty through September. Nearly half of the two-year cycle will be encumbered by a previous Congress with a Democrat controlled Senate and Republicans in the House who enabled them.
If that doesn’t make you mad, it ought to.
Last time, it ended with Republican majorities. The matador got gored.
“Yes, we do. But Congress can take its time, keep its eyes open, and just push rather than charging. Then when Obama tries the footwork, watch the feet rather than the cape.”
Agreed. But that strategy relies upon the matador making a mistake. Not a bad strategy, especially with Obama. But that’s not the strategy advocated by the majority on this board that want to shut the government down this week and keep it shut until Obama resigns and his successor agrees to repeal Obamacare and the amnesty.
It makes me very mad. It's become SOP for far too long. One thing the republicans can do to begin to solidify their gains in congress is to change it. Without the Senate in the lame duck session, they had little choice. Perhaps a shorter CSR was a possibility that could/should have been taken up, but that's a band-aid. The cure is for congress to stop being scared to take votes and to pass budgets and then appropriations bills that live within those budgets, not CSRs.
That's how they regain the power of the purse strings. This situation didn't arise overnight and it will take some time to fix.
See what I meant? The “rule” barely got by and now the whole bill is crumbling!
“The cure is for congress to stop being scared to take votes and to pass budgets and then appropriations bills that live within those budgets, not CSRs. That’s how they regain the power of the purse strings. This situation didn’t arise overnight and it will take some time to fix.”
We got in this ‘fix’ because of Harry Reid. Reid refused to use normal order to pass appropriations bill since that would cause certain democrats to make politically damaging votes. Once Reid is out in January we can go back to normal order.
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