Obama intends an up-or-down vote on health reform

[Rhinox]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_496559.html


sorry

[Beckwin]

that's why we're calling reps, to sign the letter that demands pelosi includes a public option.

[Beckwin]

more news. PCCC (boldprogressives.org) on MSNBC:

Last night, on MSNBC's Ed Show, we announced, "We can say with confidence that there would be at least 51 votes for the public option in the Senate if the House goes first" and then named names and revealed new information.
Ed Schultz called it "the latest and the best reporting I have seen anywhere on a head count of the public option."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwGZOzFAmcw

[Kuya]

all year long, they insisted that the White House and a majority of Democratic Senators vigorously supported a public option, but the only thing oh-so-unfortunately preventing its enactment was the filibuster: sadly, we have 50 but not 60 votes for it, they insisted. Democratic pundits used that claim to push for "filibuster reform," arguing that if only majority rule were required in the Senate, then the noble Democrats would be able to deliver all sorts of wonderful progressive reforms that they were truly eager to enact but which the evil filibuster now prevents. In response, advocates of the public option kept arguing that the public option could be accomplished by reconciliation -- where only 50 votes, not 60, would be required -- but Obama loyalists scorned that reconciliation proposal, insisting (at least before the Senate passed a bill with 60 votes) that using reconciliation was Unserious, naive, procedurally impossible, and politically disastrous.

• Continue Reading

But all those claims were put to the test -- all those bluffs were called -- once the White House decided that it had to use reconciliation to pass a final health care reform bill. That meant that any changes to the Senate bill (which had passed with 60 votes) -- including the addition of the public option -- would only require 50 votes, which Democrats assured progressives all year long that they had. Great news for the public option, right? Wrong. As soon as it actually became possible to pass it, the 50 votes magically vanished. Senate Democrats (and the White House) were willing to pretend they supported a public option only as long as it was impossible to pass it. Once reconciliation gave them the opportunity they claimed all year long they needed -- a "majority rule" system -- they began concocting ways to ensure that it lacked 50 votes.

All of that was bad enough, but now the scam is getting even more extreme, more transparent. Faced with the dilemma of how they could possibly justify their year-long claimed support for the public option only now to fail to enact it, more and more Democratic Senators were pressured into signing a letter supporting the enactment of the public option through reconciliation; that number is now above 40, and is rapidly approaching 50. In other words, there is a serious possibility that the Senate might enact a public option if there is a vote on it, because it's very difficult for these Senators to vote "No" after pretending all year long -- on the record -- that they supported it. In fact, The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim yesterday wrote: "the votes appear to exist to include a public option. It's only a matter of will."

The one last hope for Senate Democratic leaders was to avoid a vote altogether on the public option, thereby relieving Senators of having to take a position and being exposed. But that trick would require the cooperation of all Senators -- any one Senator can introduce a public option amendment during the reconciliation and force a vote -- and it now seems that Bernie Sanders, to his great credit, is refusing to go along with the Democrats' sham and will do exactly that: ignore the wishes of the Senate leadership and force a roll call vote on the public option.

So now what is to be done? They only need 50 votes, so they can't use the filibuster excuse. They don't seem able to prevent a vote, as they tried to do, because Sanders will force one. And it seems there aren't enough Senate Democrats willing to vote against the public option after publicly saying all year long they supported it, which means it might get 50 votes if a roll call vote is held. So what is the Senate Democratic leadership now doing? They're whipping against the public option, which they pretended all year along to so vigorously support:

Senate Democratic leaders are concerned about the amount of mischief their own Members could create if or when a health care reconciliation bill comes up for debate. And sources said some supporters of creating a public insurance option are privately worried that they will be asked to vote against the idea during debate on the bill, which could occur before March 26.

Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) acknowledged Wednesday that liberals may be asked to oppose any amendment, including one creating a public option, to ensure a smooth ride for the bill. "We have to tell people, 'You just have to swallow hard' and say that putting an amendment on this is either going to stop it or slow it down, and we just can’t let it happen," Durbin, who supports a public option, told reporters.

If -- as they claimed all year long -- a majority of Congressional Democrats and the White House all support a public option, why would they possibly whip against it, and ensure its rejection, at exactly the moment when it finally became possible to pass it? If majorities of the House and Senate support it, as does the White House, how could the inclusion of a public option possibly jeopardize passage of the bill?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/gl...ald/index.html

I'll believe it when i see it passed.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

If it includes a public option you better hope they vote on it, otherwise there's gonna be a race to the courts to have the whole damn thing invalidated. It will all have been for naught.

[Kuya]

1) Durbin didn't actually change his position. Aides say Durbin, who has been a vocal supporter of the public option all along, never meant to indicate it was dead Thursday, and the pressure he got since then didn't bring him around. "There is no change in his position; it's exactly what he meant yesterday," spokesman Joe Shoemaker told Salon. "In the simplest terms, Durbin will whip against any attempt to alter or amend the reconciliation bill sent over by the House -- if it includes a public option, Leadership will whip for it and against all amendments to strip it out; if not, they will whip against any amendments to alter the House bill." Which means Friday's "news" doesn't actually change where things stand -- the House still needs to put a public option in the reconciliation bill.

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Why is it all up to the House? For a combination of reasons. One, the House doesn't trust the Senate much farther than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could throw Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid right now. (Which is not that far, even if Reid isn't the biggest guy in Congress.) In order to finish the healthcare bill, the House will have to pass the Senate-passed version, which House members hate, and only then take up a reconciliation measure designed to "fix" the bill. The Senate has to promise the House that whatever comes over won't be changed; otherwise, the House might not have faith that the Senate will actually finish the job. Two, the reconciliation measure, because it would raise some taxes, must begin in the House anyway. And three, the Senate parliamentarian told Republicans there Thursday that the Senate can't take up the reconciliation measure until after the House has passed -- and Obama has signed -- the underlying healthcare bill. Otherwise, it's not reconciling an existing law.
All of that means Durbin had plenty of room Friday to pass the public option buck over to the House, and look justified in doing it. Conveniently, of course, that also means the Senate is slightly off the hook if the public option doesn't actually make it into the reconciliation plan.

http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare.../public_option

They've been playing these games for a while now.

[archibaldcrane]

I'll believe it when i see it passed.

Pretty much this.

We'll see what happens.

[kuronosan]

Can I get a tl;dr?

[willriker]

I am not sure... Either the Dem's are putting this through:

reconsiliation[sp?]

or

Forcing a yes/no vote in the house, which somehow ends deliberation in the senate? Now theyll need 51 votes to pass instead of 60? I am really not sure how this works. But, the more i hear/read about it, the notion that there wont be a senate vote on this bill is nonsence. This seems to just be a way around the fillibuster (need 51 votes instead of 60), but i am not absolutely sure on that.





As for the tl;dr
It was just some article by someone who believes that the dems are two faced. As in they say they are for the public option but move to prevent it at every chance they get.

I think it a lame article. If the writer really wanted to provide us with a legitimate break down of how they feel a vote would go, they would have done so in the article. Instead they cherry picked a couple actions a couple people did, and extrapolated them accross the entire party. It falls under the same type of deal as when i was able to selectively choose the information i wanted... and ended up convincing a class full of college students that sweat shop labor was/is a good thing.

People just dont question enough. they just see something written somewhere, or assume you are telling the absolute truth (unless it slaps them in the face that it is not the truth).

[kuronosan]

So what I'm getting out of this is that the Republicans now want a public option because the Dems are pushing this through, and are hoping that the Dems push it through without one so that they can look better?

[willriker]

I'm pretty sure republicans would still hate every fiber of the paper a public option would be written on.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

If they want the public option this is why. Assuming the Dem's use the Slaughter rule.

Spoiler: show

It may be clever, but it is not constitutional. To become law-hence eligible for amendment via reconciliation-the Senate health-care bill must actually be signed into law. The Constitution speaks directly to how that is done. According to Article I, Section 7, in order for a "Bill" to "become a Law," it "shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate" and be "presented to the President of the United States" for signature or veto. Unless a bill actually has "passed" both Houses, it cannot be presented to the president and cannot become a law.

To be sure, each House of Congress has power to "determine the Rules of its Proceedings." Each house can thus determine how much debate to permit, whether to allow amendments from the floor, and even to require supermajority votes for some types of proceeding. But House and Senate rules cannot dispense with the bare-bones requirements of the Constitution. Under Article I, Section 7, passage of one bill cannot be deemed to be enactment of another.

The Slaughter solution attempts to allow the House to pass the Senate bill, plus a bill amending it, with a single vote. The senators would then vote only on the amendatory bill. But this means that no single bill will have passed both houses in the same form. As the Supreme Court wrote in Clinton v. City of New York (1998), a bill containing the "exact text" must be approved by one house; the other house must approve "precisely the same text."

These constitutional rules set forth in Article I are not mere exercises in formalism. They ensure the democratic accountability of our representatives. Under Section 7, no bill can become law unless it is put up for public vote by both houses of Congress, and under Section 5 "the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question . . . shall be entered on the Journal." These requirements enable the people to evaluate whether their representatives are promoting their interests and the public good. Democratic leaders have not announced whether they will pursue the Slaughter solution. But the very purpose of it is to enable members of the House to vote for something without appearing to do so. The Constitution was drafted to prevent that.

[Rhinox]

They're not going to use any rule that has a chance to be overturned by the over zealot activists judges on the right.

It's just more paranoia propagated by right-wing bloggers to further terrify their base.

Fact of the matter is if this gets done by reconciliation it would be perfectly legal and constitutional.

in fact you can argue that the GOP abused this process more then anyone else on extremely partisan issues.

The 1995 Balanced Budget Act was passed in reconciliation and a partisan issue which one can argue has bigger ramifications then any health insurance reform.

The 2001 Bush Tax Cut was passed in reconciliation as was the 2003 Bush tax cuts which is one of many reasons we're in the mess we are in. To put it in perspective swampy the Bush Tax cuts cost the government $2.48 trillion dollars in lost revenue which is enough to pay for healthcare overhaul twice over a ten year period. Coupled with two wars and Obama is the bad guy here?

and to round out the list

The 2005 Deficit Reduction Act was also passed in reconciliation

The 2006 Tax Relief Extensions Act was passed in reconciliation.

all under GOP lead congress. reconciliation isn't the dirty word the revisionist historians on the right would lead you to believe. They even gone as far as trying to label reconciliation was the so called "nuclear option"(which it isn't) on fox news its really laughable.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

. <- The point. You ->

[Rhinox]

You have to excuse me swampy in your constant paranoiac babbling about the Slaughter rule which No one has given serious consideration on the left because of the judicial activists on the SCOTUS I veered into a different direction which is far more likely.


Btw would you care to respond to my point about the Bush Tax cuts swampy?

[Rhinox]

just Google "Slaughter solution" and tell me the bias on the people reporting it.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

That was only one issue. The current bill in the house is not the same as the one in the Senate. Therefor, if Obama signs it, there's still going to be a race to the courts by right-wingers to have it declared unconstitutional, hence why they might want the public option in the bill.

The Slaughter rule is one issue, the bill being different than the one in the Senate is another issue that is separate and independent.

And what about it? Was it calculated how many jobs would have been lost? Furthermore, how much would it have cost the private sector if those tax cuts hadn't been enacted? You're turning the issue upside down when say what it "costs the govt."

[Rhinox]

That was only one issue. The current bill in the house is not the same as the one in the Senate. Therefor, if Obama signs it, there's still going to be a race to the courts by right-wingers to have it declared unconstitutional, hence why they might want the public option in the bill.

The Slaughter rule is one issue, the bill being different than the one in the Senate is another issue that is separate and independent.

And what about it? Was it calculated how many jobs would have been lost? Furthermore, how much would it have cost the private sector if those tax cuts hadn't been enacted? You're turning the issue upside down when say what it "costs the govt."

Bottom line is its lost revenue. how would you quantify the amount of jobs lost or saved(remember that term?)

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

That's the problem with government taxation, you never know who the victims are. And somewhere along the line I thought someone showed the govt. revenue went up after the tax cuts, not down.

[Rhinox]

lol? where people voluntarily giving their money to washington? you make no sense.

and please don't give me that retarded logic of they created new jobs! thus more income!

because any revenue added during that time period is offset by the massive tax cuts a few times over.

btw got a big chuckle out of this

http://cdn.crooksandliars.com/files/...debt_42d6b.jpg

Fiscal conservatives ahoy.