NB...
Yes, it would be subject to filibuster. If my memory is correct, Obamacare wasn't a stand alone bill, bit a rider on a funding bill. Because of this fact, we have been told it could be undone in the Senate with 51, Mark Levin was on a screed about this about a year after O-care was passed. Tangent to this do you remember the tricks they did in the Senate to make it work? The adding as a rider was to prevent any changes, an up and down vote because changes meant reconciliation and the chance of failure, they couldn't risk it in the house and do it all again, because they lost the 60, Kennedy Died and Scott Brown took "his seat".
Now how many changes can Rand Paul and or other Senators make without violating the spirit of this as a reconciliation bill is the question. I have heard they may have more leeway, and I have also heard V.P. Pence can invoke some Senate rules to negate resistance, I am not wonk in regards to Senate rules, perhaps another Freeper can opine who is really up to speed on this.
"Why are we so passively accepting Mitch McConnell's diktat that the filibuster rule will not be eliminated for regular legislation even as it has been done by him to confirm Justice Gorsuch?"
I think a tangent question is why is Mitch so Passive. With the 60 threshold, I don't see PDJT's Tax Bill even getting to the Senate Floor with Cloture / Filibuster. While we had a number of defectors ( Spectre, Collins ) to get them to vote on O-Care on the Floor, I can't see 8 Dem's defecting even if it is to save their sorry @$$es in 18' since they reside in Pro-Trump States. He will have to go Nuclear at this point, their is no real comity anymore, comity to give your opponents views a venue to be heard, so screw it, ram them like they rammed us.
I am confused about the “senate rule”. To me it seems that the rule is there so that the senators will not be inconvenienced, kind of like the “symbolic” hunger strike that was held recently by the college kids who were allowed to eat if they got hungry.
Wasn’t the original intent of the filibuster to make the senators so uncomfortable that they would use it as a last resort? I know nobody wants to talk for hours and hours on end, and nobody wants to listen to it, but if they forced a real one, instead of this symbolic b.s., I don’t think we would see it bantered about so often. Also, in the case of a real one, the senators could just wait until the person talking had to go to the bathroom or passed out from exhaustion and immediately call a vote.
It seems to me that this is “senate rule” is just a snow job on the American people so that nobody has to own uncomfortable legislation, and so that each side can use these issues as a way to raise money. They can exempt themselves and we continue to suffer.
Please advise. Am I wrong?
IIRC, they took a totally different bill that the House had previously sent to the Senate, removed ALL of the text, then added all the ObamaCare text.