Since you were obviously not paying attention, here is what happened.
Way back in 2009 when ObamaCare was being constructed, there were two procedural legislative constructs to create ObamaCare- one from the House (Pelosi) and one from the Senate (Reid).
The biggest hurdle in overcoming the constitutional minority protections for overreaching legislative constructs is the Senate. The Senate is structurally built around a process that requires minority consideration to pass law. Knowing this, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid needed a system to work around the legislative blocks (tools) of Republicans.
One of the tricks in their road-map was to get a bill passed the Senate first. The Senate vote hurdles are the tallest (60). The plan was for the Senate Bill to then go to the House for changes, and then back to the Senate for reconciliation of those changes, ie. lower vote hurdle (51).
So Harry Reid stripped out an already existing House bill sent to the Senate that was to fund the retirement accounts of federal fire-fighters. The construct of ObamaCare that Reid created through bribery, deal-making, scheme and fraud, used the House Fire-fighting bill as the “vehicle” holding the Senate legislative construct. After sequestering the Senators for two weeks, it passed with only dems (60) at 1:38am on 12/23/09.
The House also passed a bill, but their version was remarkably different, which would normally go to the senate for changes, adjustments and a vote. However, after we elected Scott Brown Jan 19th 2010, Harry Reid only had 59 votes when the Senate returned from the holiday recess.
Scott Brown meant the House bill was Dead On Arrival in the Senate.
The only option was for the House (Pelosi) to vote on the Senate bill (Reid) passed on 12/23/09. However, the Democrats could not change anything; because if they changed anything when they send it back to the Senate another full high-hurdle Senate vote would be needed, and Reid had lost that ability.
So Nancy Pelosi talked one-on-one with each of her House members, and convinced them to vote on the Senate Bill “as is”, even though the Senate bill was highly unliked by massive numbers of House democrats (especially the ‘blue dogs’). It was a plan that depended on modification of the Senate Bill AFTER House passage. That “after passage” modification plan was the reconciliation process.
The House voted to approve the Senate bill “without changes” thereby making it law. At this moment in time the Reid Bill was momentarily the ObamaCare law.
The new law was then immediately modified by a second House bill and sent to the Senate for use in the budgetary technique of “reconciliation”, where only 51 votes are needed to modify an existing bill based on funding, or the budget of the bill.
Bottom line: Republicans have no testicles.
Thank you!! I had forgotten how fiendishly convoluted that whole process was. I just wish the Repubs would be that tenacious in their dealings!
Wow, great summary!
How then have they got a repeal bill to Obama’s desk multiple times for him to veto.
BS
Is this even legal/constitutional? They broke the intent of our rules. The thing that surprised me is that I didn't think the rats were this smart...who masterminded all this trickery?