Constipation coming to the Senate

While the Senate Democrats were successful in garnering the needed 60 votes to proceed to the Health care bill in the Senate this past Saturday, this vote is only the beginning. When the Senate returns from their week long recess on Monday, Nov. 30, they will begin the amdt process. However, during this process, the Senate Majority Leader could need to muster a few more procedural votes requring 60 Senators in order to continue the process. The vote held last Saturday night was the easiest of these upcoming procedural votes. The threshold on some of these other votes could be make or break for the bill language for subjects such as abortion, public option, DR panels and the like. Also, if the Senate is able to navigate thru these various subjects and achieve 60 votes, more of these procedural votes will be needed to send the bill to conference with the House. Since the Majority Leader began this debate using a shell bill and not the House passed Health care bill, the House will have to re-inject their language, in whole or in part, back into the bill language in order to get any of it under discussion during the conference process. Meanwhile, during the Health care debated, a legislative constipation will be occuring. You see vital bills that have passed the House will be stuck in the Senate waiting floor consideration. Unless the Leader can get consent to go to these bills, a motion to proceed to any of them will kick the Health care debate back to the beginning........a redo of last Saturday's motion to proceed cloture vote. Some of these bills caught up in the legislative constitpation are: Debt limit extension needed by mid-Dec. The Omnibus approps bill which funds the government past Dec. 18 and the DR fix which stops a 21% cut in medicare payments scheduled to begin 1/1/2010. Sorry for the bathroom reference but it sure makes the case pretty clear. If the Leader has to start all over with Health care after taking care of some of these bills, look out for the pivot to reconciliation. Remember, reconciliation only requires 50 votes in this current Senate and has a time limit of 20 hours for debate. So while we all look forward the Thanksgiving holiday with our friends and family, this writer will keep an eye on the reconciliation ball that ultimately may be brought into play in order to complete the Health Care debate this Congress.

Now that the Health Care bill is being voted on by the Senate Finance comm., the Senate Majority Leader intends to bring the bill to the floor as early as Oct. 20, 2009.

However, the point of this post is to let folks know that if the Senate considers the bill under reconciliation,w/out getting into the weeds, there is a process that allows amdts and motions to be offered after all time has expired for debate. This amdt process is ugly, terribly inefficient and makes the Senate look like a bunch of boobs. In a nut shell, Senators can offer an amendment, get 30 seconds to explain the effect, and the Senate votes, right then and there. I have seen 50+ amdts voted on, essentially back-to-back over a two day period. Senators have no idea what they are really voting on. If this occurs, the TV visual of this could be tremendous. It will make the campaign about “reading the bill” look like kindergarten work. This side show could begin as early as the third week of October.
Take a look at this 4 mins video.............YIKES!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ig6LdxDYU