Forgive me if I'm telling you what you already know. She's referring to the process known as reconciliation. Basically only requiring a simple majority, 51%, rather then 60% to pass major legislation. While it's been done before by both sides of the aisle it has never been done for something this important. Other major forms of legislation to do with healthcare like social security and medicare and medicaid passed with bipartisan support. Not so this one. Add to this the intricacies of the Slaughter Rules and chaos reigns.
This is really very huge and very risky politically for the current Congress. I think the Republican howling at the moon some politicians are doing is inappropriate and unnecessary. We should be focusing on dealing with what we have and stopping a further slide into Soviet style socialism. Here's a short description of how this came to be I've stolen from Taranto's Best Of The Web Today from last week. It's an interesting journey through manipulation that both appalls and fascinates me. While your average American sleeps through it all. *Democrats trying to force through ObamaCare over the will of the voters are transforming the House of Representatives into a procedural funhouse hall of mirrors. "House Republicans announced a plan Tuesday that would force Democrats to vote on whether they should have a vote," the Washington Post reports. Let's try to explain. Late last year, the House and Senate each passed its own version of ObamaCare. Normally, these bills would go to a "conference committee," at which selected congressmen from both chambers would iron out the differences between them, producing a "conference report"--a single bill that would become law after both chambers approve it and the president signs it. Scott Brown's election made it impossible to enact ObamaCare using the usual procedure. Republican senators now number 41, enough to prevent any conference report from coming to the floor for a vote. For whatever reason--and we'll speculate on this in a moment--President Obama was determined to ram this thing through despite the message the voters of Massachusetts sent in January. So congressional Democrats had to come up with a Plan B. Since the House, unlike the Senate, operates for the most part by simple majority rule, the simplest solution would be for the House to pass the version of ObamaCare that the Senate already approved. It could then go to President Obama for his signature without any further Senate action required. Take that, Massachuses and Massachusettes! But this option, while procedurally simple, was politically impossible. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters, "Nobody wants to vote for the Senate bill." Some liberal House members view it as insufficiently socialistic since, unlike the House bill, it would not put the government directly into the business of selling insurance (the so-called public option). And most everyone is squeamish about the special deals struck to win the votes of senators like Nebraska's Ben Nelson, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, Florida's Bill Nelson and Connecticut's Joe Lieberman. Principled moderates all, they steadfastly refused to vote for legislation they didn't believe in unless the price was right. Democrats thus had to find a way of getting the Senate to make some changes. They alighted on "reconciliation," a procedure through which certain legislation involving the federal budget can go through the Senate on a simple majority vote. The House would pass the Senate bill, and both houses would pass the reconciliation bill, yielding a final product that, if all went well, would be merely miserable as opposed to horrible. Up to this point, the procedural logic makes sense even if the political logic doesn't. But now things take a bizarre turn. The promise of reconciliation isn't enough to persuade some representatives to set aside their objections to the Senate bill. The result is the delightfully named "Slaughter rule," under which the House, instead of approving the Senate bill, would approve a "rule" that would "deem" the Senate bill to have "passed." Republicans object to this bit of trickery--hence their effort to force a vote on holding a vote. "By supporting this resolution, Democrats can demonstrate that they will not try to hide from their constituents," the Post quotes Minority Leader John Boehner as saying. What will probably happen is that Democrats will block the vote on whether to hold a vote on the bill. Then--assuming Pelosi is able to scrape together a majority, which remains uncertain--they will vote on the rule to deem the Senate bill passed. They would thus bypass both the vote on whether to hold the vote and the vote itself. But they would still have to approve the "rule" to "deem" the bill "passed," which--assuming the courts either approve of this procedural dodge or decide the question is not justiciable--is the functional equivalent of voting for the Senate bill. The Post reports that Democrats "suggested Republicans were trying to distract from the real discussion of what's actually in the reform bill. . . . 'If you don't want to talk about substance, [you] talk about process,' Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said." The Washington Times quotes Rep. Steny Hoyer, Pelosi's No. 2: " 'So what,' says [sic] the American people. What they're interested in is what resulted. 'What did you do for me and my family to make my life more secure and better and greater quality.' And that's what we're trying to do." But if the substance of the bill is as good as they say it is--indeed, if it is anything other than a monstrosity--why do they have to come up with one procedural gimmick after another to persuade their fellow partisans to approve it? Furthermore, especially if the American people care about substance and not process, the Slaughter rule looks delusional. Is any voter going to judge his congressman more favorably because he voted for a "rule" to "deem" the Senate bill "passed" rather than cast the substantively identical vote to pass the bill? Is any wavering member of Congress foolish enough to expect that his constituents will make this distinction? Admittedly, one can't rule out the possibility of congressmen behaving foolishly. Perhaps Pelosi and Hoyer are close to a majority and the Slaughter scam is targeted at a handful of waverers whom they know to be especially gullible. But such tactics seem more likely to backfire. CNN, for example, reports that undecided Pennsylvania Democrat Jason Altmire "said he doesn't support Slaughter's idea because it 'increases the opportunity for the public to say, "You know what, I'm not comfortable with this process." ' " What accounts for the relentless drive to ram ObamaCare through every procedural obstacle, regardless of the political cost? Ideological zeal, from Obama himself above all, is part of the explanation, but it isn't sufficient. One can, after all, be ideologically committed to a goal without falling into a self-defeating obsession. There seems to be an emotional desperation at work here. The legislative success of ObamaCare has become so tied up with Obama's sense of himself that he feels he must push ahead--and to some extent, the leaders in Congress feel the same way. Obama is not the calm rationalist he seemed during the campaign. But while there's a place for passion in politics, to be governed by a politician who fails to govern his passions is a frightening and creepy experience.* dj On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 3:46 PM, frantheman <[email protected]> wrote: > "What I dislike most about Obamacare though is this notion that the > leftists in Washington think that they can pass this thing through, > cram it through, with disregard to consider the will of the people, > disregard of these constitutional legal traditional processes which > have thus far been used in America's processes to allow policy to be > adopted that do adhere to the will of the people." > -- Sarah Palin > > Wow! Deep, deep thoughts! Have I got this right ... a group of > leftists in Washington, unelected by the American people, have pushed > through a proposal of an unelected president, in an illegal, > unconstitutional extra-parliamentary way? The people of the USA are > indeed fortunate to have advocates of due process and constitutional > parliamentary procedures such as Ms. Palin ... (oh yes, and isn't her > effortless command of the English language inspiring?) > > Francis > > On 22 Mrz., 04:23, Don Johnson <[email protected]> wrote: >> Let it all hang out. Marx and Stalin and Mao quotes welcome. Paine >> and Jefferson quotes appreciated. >> >> "A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot >> survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, >> for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves >> amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling >> through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. >> For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar >> to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he >> appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He >> rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night >> to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so >> that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor >> is the plague." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero >> >> "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more >> corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." >> "When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will >> herald the end of the republic." >> "The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You >> have to catch it yourself." >> ---Benjamin Franklin >> >> dj > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]<minds-eye%[email protected]> . > For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/minds-eye?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/minds-eye?hl=en.
