- " A Trump veto takes away the pressure that has intimidated the Republicans for decades. "
- ... A proposal is being pushed by some Senate Republicans that would seek to ensure that a House-passed bill could be passed intact by only a simple majority of senators.”
“How would that work?
Well, the vice president, of course, is the president of the Senate.
The thinking goes
- that if the Senate parliamentarian ruled that parts of the bill can’t be folded into budget reconciliation, Vice President Mike Pence could simply overrule that.
- ‘That alone, I think, would break the logjam,’ he told reporters Thursday.
Perhaps, but that’s not all it would break. This would be the executive branch’s changing the rules of the upper legislative body.
Filibusters could be broken, perhaps in any circumstance, at the whim of the vice president.
In honor of a certain former veep, that would be a BFD.”
In comment number 1 of The GOP Has a Nuclear Option ...
- ... "Under the Budget Act of 1974, which is what governs reconciliation, it is the presiding officer, the vice president of the United States, who rules what is permissible on reconciliation and what is not,” Cruz said.
“And that is a conversation I have been having with a number of my colleagues.” ...