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Actually, that's not completely correct. In order for a bill to become a law (I'm channeling School House Rock all the sudden...), the exact same bill, with the exact same language, must pass both houses of Congress. Ideally, the House writes a bill and votes on it. Then the Senate looks at the same bill, and votes on it. If both passes, then yay! It's a law.

What often happens is that the House passes a bill. Then the senate passes a bill on the same issue, but with different language. At this point, those are two separate bills. They don't become a law. The House then looks at the differences between the bill they passed and the one the Senate passed. If they're ok with the Senate bill in it's entirety, they can simply vote on it and pass it as well. At that point, the same bill has passed both houses and becomes law. If they don't like the Senate version, they can make changes (presumably with some discussion and compromise with the Senate) to find a single bill both houses can agree on. Then the House must pass this. And... since the new bill is different than the one the Senate originally passed, that new bill must *also* pass the Senate. Note that every time the Senate must vote on a new version of the bill, the full and normal cloture rules apply (need 60 votes to end debate and call a vote).


The Dems know that they don't have enough votes in the Senate to get cloture. Thus, their only option is for the House to vote on the Senate bill "as is". Of course, they don't like that bill, and most of the voters don't like it either. But that's the option open to them.

Here's the thing. They don't have enough votes to pass the Senate bill in the House. If they did, they'd just vote on it and be done. What they're trying to do here is not required to get the bill passed a Senate filibuster. They can do that normally by passing the bill. This procedure is intended to get the bill passed without actually voting on the bill itself. That way each member of the House can claim that they "didn't vote for the bill".

It's BS. Utter BS. It's a violation of the rules. The procedural motion is only used when the bill would pass and has enough votes to pass, but they want to avoid the publicity of passing it on the floor. Yes. It's a chicken procedure anyway, but it's never been used on an issue in which the passage itself is only possible if you use the procedure. As stated earlier, it's usual application is to pass extensions on existing (but perhaps unpopular) law. I'm not even sure how they can accomplish it legally anyway, but it shows just how desperate they are.


The reconciliation plan is bad enough, but this is almost certainly in violation of the Constitution itself (and not just a rules violation). The Constitution requires that both houses pass by vote any law. This is "new law". And it's not *just* new law, but would represent a dramatic shift in law and a significant expansion of the role of government. To attempt to pass this without voting on it in the House? You're one step away from just tearing the Constitution in half. The House has never voted on this bill. It cannot pass it with a procedural hand wave. To do so would shake the very foundation upon which US law is based.


You've got to be very far along the "ends justify the means" position on this to accept this as legitimate.

And if the rules allow for the bypassing of "obstructionist" tactics then surely it;s likely that bill in question is a really good idea, if I follow you.

Yes, they do. That's the point, isn't it? If creating a National Kitten Day were as massively unpopular as the current health care bill, you'd get the same kind of obstructionist tactics being used, wouldn't you?

You could also argue that requiring a vote at all is "obstructionist", right? After all, voting "no" is obstructionist. Why not just allow whichever party has a majority in Congress to just write whatever laws they want? What's the difference? Aren't you just arbitrarily declaring any rules which allow the other party to prevent your party from doing what they want "obstruction"?


Obstruction is part of the law Joph. In order to pass a new law, you have to have enough support to overcome those obstructions. My point was that if you can't, then the law clearly isn't one we should be passing. That whole pesky Democracy thing and all...

Except that in this case, the rules don't. The Dems are just claiming that they do. As I pointed out above, trying to pass "new law" via this procedural method is a direct violation of the Constitution. The process we have in place for passing laws exists for a reason. What the Dems are trying to say is basically that none of those rules really matter and that they can pass whatever they want anyway.

It's not only a bad thing to do for a really bad reason, if they were to succeed, it would set a precedent which basically chucks our entire legislative system out the window.

Thank goodness. It's a pile of **** as is anyway.

Nope and I already voted to not pass it like this. I'm all for Healthcare reform, but make it legit and actually reform it.

The point you're missing (and that I assume you're actually incapable of following) is that obstructionism has zilch to do with a bill's merits. You can obstruct a great bill. You can choose to let a shabby bill go for a vote. The fact that the GOP chose to try and block this speaks nothing for its merits.

So is reconciliation. Hell, so is "deem & pass" as shown by its successful uses in other occassions. If, for some reason, it's not in this case then the courts will decide it so. Personally, I think it's more likely that the bill will pass via traditional arm-twisting and vote whipping and then we can all rejoice in how awesome the bill must be because it passed.

Just pass the goddam bill.

And as for question #2, I'm a straight male so homosexuality and abortion issues have nothing to do with me! Yay!

If the definition of "great bill" includes "has a large majority support in Congress and is very popular and universally viewed as a good idea", then no, you can't obstruct a great bill. Because a great bill woldn't be filibustered. And if it were, it would be able to overcome cloture. And if that were the case, then amendments and adjustments would be easy to make (assuming they have equally "great" support). And all the of the ridiculous tricks the Dems are trying to use to ram this particular piece of legislative garbage onto the US law books would not even be considered.



Of course it does. It speaks volumes about its merits. If the bill were popular and they tried to block it they would be the ones receiving angry phone calls and letters and emails and faxes at their offices, not the Democrats. If it was really popular *and* bi-partisan, they couldn't bother to try to stop it because most of them would like it already, and those that didn't wouldn't have the numbers and support to obstruct it.


Do you get that by definition only marginal and shabby bills can be obstructed?



They're part of the procedures, in which past uses have not been found to violate the law. There is a difference. The requirements for specific quantities of votes to pass bills into law, and the requirements for those bills to be passed in a given order in both houses are law. They are not just convenient rules designed to speed up procedure in cases where the outcome is not in doubt.

Reconciliation takes advantage of the fact that budgetary changes can be made to a bill or law without requiring that the entire bill or law be re-written or re-voted upon. It does not exist as a means to pass a bill and then make changes to it which would not pass without having to go through the whole voting procedure again (including cloture).

The "Deem and Pass" rule has been used for issues in which the passage is not in doubt, but for which the process isn't one either side wants to go through. It allows them to attach conditions on the passage of an amendment, stating that if the amendment (or another bill) is later agreed passed, the original bill is deemed to have passed as well. It's designed as well to speed things up, and is usually applied only to changes to existing areas of law. It's usually done to pass several related bits of legislation which may be in different legal areas, but to make sure that all pass together or not at all. So if I write a bill to change the requirements to qualify for a farm subsidy, but I only want those changes to take effect if an amendment to the legal code defining farms passes as well, I might link them together this way, with an understanding that if the amendment passes, the subsidy bill is "deemed to pass" as well. And yes, there are cases where this might be used to avoid an unpopular vote on the floor, but never ever in a situation where such a massive new area of law is being created.

It's not there to allow a party to push through an unpopular bill by navigating around the existing legal obstacles which all bills must pass to become law. And it's absolutely not designed to be used in conjunction with the senate reconciliation process to allow the House to effectively 'float' a bill for the Senate to reconcile while waiting on actual passage of said bill until that reconciliation passes as well.




It's possible. Of course, we'll end up with the absolute worst of both worlds in this case. A broken bill that has been made into law, not because it's a good bill, but because it was the only bill they could manage to get through without having to actually get cloture in the Senate. It's kinda like you're making a pizza and then turned the oven off halfway through, then decided to just serve the half baked pizza anyway.


Smart people would chuck the ruined pizza, turn the oven back on, and cook something else. But Dems aren't "smart people" in this context.

The procedural trick we're talking about is occurring in the House Joph. They only need 50%+1 to pass the current version of the Bill into law.

That's not "standard" though. It is "standard" for any bill passing the Senate to be fully debated as long as any member of the Senate wishes to. The cloture rule was designed to prevent a very small few Senators from stopping all business on the floor. The Senate has always been about allowing as much debate for as long as possible.

Originally cloture required 2/3rds of the Senate, and yet they managed to move forward. You know why? Because it forced the parties to work together on legislation instead of being so partisan. That's the point of the filibuster. And the more we press for eliminating that rule, the worse and more partisan our politics become. Currently it only requires 3/5ths of Senators to pass cloture and end debate. I don't think that's an unreasonable "obstacle" to overcome.


You cannot complain about partisanship and *also* complain that the 60 vote cloture rule in the Senate is bad. One leads to the other. All the Dems have to do is propose legislation which isn't blatantly partisan and this would not be a problem. If Republicans try to filibuster a bill which is popular then, as I pointed out earlier, they'll be the ones getting angry messages from their constituents.


That's not the case here. The Senate is supposed to be obstructionist. If the House is the Id of Congress, the Senate is the Ego. It is supposed to take as much time as is needed to stop and think before acting. That is why it exists. Apparently, a whole lot of people don't understand this.



Lol. That's like blaming your parents for punishing you when you did something you weren't supposed to do. The Democrats caused this by pushing a horribly partisan bill. If they'd had popular support for the bill, then GOP opposition would certainly have faded. Neither happened. The people don't want this bill. The right thing is to not pass this bill. The Dems have only themselves to blame for writing such a monstrosity in the first place.



Um... The rules allowing full debate on the Senate floor have been in place since day one. The other procedural tricks are things dreamed up later to deal with various specific situations (including cloture itself btw). The idea that you could compare one to the other is absurd. It is *normal* for the Senate to require full debate before voting. Cloture is a procedural "trick" introduced to get around the normal rules. As is reconciliation. As is "Deem to pass".

The GOP is following the rules. The Dems are trying to use procedural tricks in ways they were not intended to break those rules.

No. Both parties realized that it was pointless to attempt to pass purely partisan legislation. So they didn't and the issue came up less often.



Sure. But it was proposed by Aaron Burr about 20 years earlier. The point being that the idea that the Senate should be a body in which debate should last until every member of the Senate has been satisfied prior to voting on the issue at hand was present at the very founding of the Senate.

It was over a hundred years later when the cloture rule was created. We can label that progress, or look at it as a sore loser wanting to do something earlier Senate rules didn't allow. Either way, to argue that using the Senate rules to ensure full debate is somehow in violation of the spirit of the Senate, while using rules to end debate is in keeping with said spirit is demonstrably false.


The Senate arguably exists as a body as a check to a majority party simply passing anything it wants. That's why the debate rules exist in the form they are in. Cloture rules have weakened that over time, but let's not pretend that the change is somehow going in the other direction.



The Dems wrote the damn Bill Joph. They are "directly responsible". Period.

If they wanted to pass health care with bi-partisan support, it was their responsibility to write a health care bill which could pass with bi-partisan support. How on earth can you blame the GOP here? It's like blaming someone for not going along with your attempt to kick him in the balls.

There are tons of legislation which passes every year Joph. If the GOP was being obstructionist just for the sake of being obstructionist, wouldn't they block everything? Wasn't there a major jobs bill that just passed in the Senate? Why didn't the GOP filibuster that? Kinda obvious that it passed because it was something the GOP could agree with. Which implies that they'd have done the same if the health care bill was something they could agree with, doesn't it? They aren't blocking it in some kind of simplistic "me GOP, you Dem" fight to the death Joph. I know you want to paint it that way, but it's pretty darn obvious to any rational person that this just isn't the case.


You want to blame everything and everyone *except* those obviously responsible for the disaster that this health care reform effort has become. And when I point this out, you then lash out at me? You're kidding, right?


It's not the GOP's fault here Joph. They've shown abundant evidence that they're more than willing to pass laws with the Dems if those laws are reasonable and not horribly partisan (or at least not horribly partisan *and* unpopular with the public). One is left with the only obvious conclusion: The GOP is blocking this bill because it is unreasonable, and partisan, and unpopular with the public. Your party pretty much scored the trifecta of bad legislation on this one. Denial isn't helping matters either...

Edited, Mar 17th 2010 8:24pm by gbaji