Posted on 10/04/2009 2:20:29 PM PDT by GVnana
The healthcare reform bill apparently poised to clear the Senate Finance Committee would raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 and thereby violate President Obama’s campaign promise to protect middle-income Americans from tax increases, asserted Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
Cornyn, a member of the Finance Committee, on ABC's "This Week,” told host George Stephanopoulos “the president can’t keep his promise under the bill that’s currently pending in the finance committee or any of the other bills that are currently in front of us.”
Committee Democrats last week cleared the way for the healthcare reform bill sponsored by Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to face a final committee vote this week, partly by beating back GOP amendments, including one from Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) to bar middle-income tax increases.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Then Obama won’t sign it will he? ha.
Of course he’ll sign it. Have you ever seen anything out of that man that makes you think he gives a damn what you think?
“Keeping promises” is for suckers (i.e. the GOP), Mr. Cornyn. Do really think the jOker cares whether he keeps this promise? He’s broken all his others so far, what makes this one any different?
“Then Obama won’t sign it will he? ha.”
Well, what the Senate leadership will likely to is to wait until a second bill comes out of another committee. It will then “reconcile” those bills for something presented directly to the house.
Instead of having that reconciled bill take on a new “S” number, likely it will ride of a bill that came out of the House (gutting the original, etc).
When the Senate passes this bill, the thing will go to committee since it has an “HR” number, thus robbing the full House of a chance to vote on it.
Whatever the bill looks like at this point will be signed.
Cornyn is a good one to talk about breaking promises. He voted for the bailouts. RINOs need to go as quickly as Obama.
FWIW, yesterday Dick Morris predicted Obamacare passage into law by the slimest of margins. Then voters get four years of growing rage to vent at the voting booty.
man if you consider Cornyn a rino then I guess we dont have any real republicans in congress.
I guess not. Cornyn needs to go. He and Kay Bailout...both of them. TEXAS CAN DO BETTER.
There ARE VERY FEW real conservatives in congress. 4 at most senate, maybe a dozen reps .. ther est aren’t worth the paper to wipe my behind. go ahead .. cont em out.
The republicans ast they stand ARE THE THIRD PARTY.
Right,I realize that what the Senate passes now has no meaning. Nor what the House passes either. Even the reconciled bills are meaningless.
What matters is what comes out of conference. That is when all the Dim “goodies” will go back into it. This is why Bacus is trying to cobble any bill together than can get 60 votes to get to conference.
As long as he keeps exposing odumbo on his favorite tv show, he gets an ataboy
on what show ?
Sure. “Ataboy” while you’re there, Cornyn. Now go away and let a real conservative get the job done.
TWohlford wrote:
Well, what the Senate leadership will likely to is to wait until a second bill comes out of another committee. It will then “reconcile” those bills for something presented directly to the house.
Instead of having that reconciled bill take on a new “S” number, likely it will ride of a bill that came out of the House (gutting the original, etc).
When the Senate passes this bill, the thing will go to committee since it has an “HR” number, thus robbing the full House of a chance to vote on it.
Whatever the bill looks like at this point will be signed.
You have most of this correct, but not exactly. There are Constitutional issues and Senate rules issues involved.
First, there is Article 1 Section 7 of the Constitution. It starts out:
All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
What this means is that the Senate can’t start this thing. They can’t pass it as a "S. xxxx" bill from the Senate. The constitution forbids that.
Their only course of action is to take a bill that the House has already passed, and add this as an amendment, or make this an “amendment in the form of a substitute” discarding the entire text of what the House passed and substituting this bill in its place.
This action is clearly not what the founders and framers of the Constitution meant by proposing amendments in the Senate. It also usurps powers guaranteed to the House of Representatives. It is tyranny by the Senate.
This was done last year, by a bipartisan group of Senators, with H.R. 1424, the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.” When that bill passed the House in March of 2008, it was known as the “Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act.” The Senate substituted the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (TARP bold, just like regular TARP, which had just failed in the House, but improved with “extra sweeteners”) for the Paul Wellstone Mental Heath and Addiction Equity Act.
This year, for the Health Care bill, the Senate Democrats, in a very partisan manner, will do the same thing. They will most likely select H.R.1586, a bill “To impose an additional tax on bonuses received from certain TARP recipients.” Whatever bill they select to amend with this substitute, it has to meet these conditions:
If the bill they amend doesn’t meet both conditions, Article 1 Section 7 will have been violated in actual fact (not just in spirit).
Now, after the Senate passes the amendment in the form of a substitute to H.R.1586, and actually passes the amended version of H.R.1586, they send that bill back to the House, as amended by the Senate.
At this point, the House has two choices. The first (easiest) choice is they can vote to concur with the amendments proposed by the Senate. This would cede all of the House’s legislative authority to the Senate. The House becomes nothing more than a rubber stamp for Senate actions. I’m not sure if Queen Nancy wants to demote the entire institution of the House of Representatives to that level. It could happen, though. This “America’s Healthy Future Act’ is important. It is possible that it is more important than the entire institution of the House of Representatives. Of course, last year, she damaged the institution of the House of Representatives when she led a bi-partisan group in the House to roll over and vote to concur with the Senate on the “Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act.Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.”
If the House wants to concur with the Senate, that is a simple up or down vote. If it passes by a simple majority, the amended bill goes to the President.
The other choice for the House is to send the two versions of H.R.1586 to a Conference Committee for reconciliation. That allows modification to the bill, but has some limitations. The limitations aren’t on the Conference Committee itself. The Conference Committee can do almost anything to a bill, even completely rewrite it. But the Conference Committee doesn’t have the final say on the matter. The result of the Conference Committee’s work and debate is the Conference Report. This is a new version of the bill that “merges” the version that was originally passed by the House with the version that was passed by the Senate. When the Senate amends a bill with a substitute, the Senate rules allow greater latitude to the Conferees. They can basically make another substitute, and include anything that either house has actually passed. They can include other stuff, too, but that runs afoul of Senate rules. More on that in a minute.
The Conference Report, when the Conferees agree to it by a majority vote, goes back to the House and the Senate. Each body must vote on and pass the Conference Report before it goes to the Pres__ent for a signature to become law.
In the House, the leadership and the Rules Committee put forth a resolution for consideration. This resolution defines how much debate will be allowed on the Conference Report, and when the final vote will be held. For the Health Care measure, expect this to be a call for an immediate vote. No Debate needed, no time to consider the measure. It will be so important that we tax ourselves immediately and severely in order to have health insurance “reforms&rdqou; starting in July of 2013 that there will be no time for debate, no need to read this important bill, just vote on it immediately.
In the Senate, it is more complex. Senate Rule 28 covers Conference Committee Report.
Since H.R.1586 will involve an amendment in the form of a substitute, the Conference Report theoretically can contain almost anything that has passed either house, combined in any way the conferees choose. However, the conferees may only include “mater which is a germane modification of subjects in disagreement.” If any Senator objects to the Conference Report, they can bring a point of order. On a substitute, this could be for a number of reasons. The Senator might think material is in the conference report was not passed by either house (the Conferees made up entirely new language), or that some of the material is nog “a germane modification.” That vague standards make it easy to bring a point of order for a substitute from the Conference Committee. A point of order can be set aside only by a three-fifths vote of the Senate (60 Senators).
What this means for the health care bill is that there will be pressure on the House to just pass what the Senate gives them. If the House calls for a Conference Committee, it will present some serious issues. First, the House hasn’t actually passed any of their Health Care bills. So they don’t have any language to put into a substitute. They could hold up the Conference Committee until after they pass something, but that adds more delays and this is so important (to the Pres__ent and leadership) that it can’t wait. Having the Conference Committee make up something new, or make any kind of changes to the language that passes the Senate risks a point of order and getting blocked by a lack of 60 votes.
| From the desk of cc2k: |
pabianice wrote:
FWIW, yesterday Dick Morris predicted Obamacare passage into law by the slimest of margins. Then voters get four years of growing rage to vent at the voting booty.
I think you misspelled slimiest, though you might have meant slimmest.
As for “voting booty,” who votes with their booty? That could explain the situation we are in now. Perhaps we need a constitutional amendment to prevent anyone from voting with their booty.
</humor> Sorry, you left a very target rich post, and I thought I might bring some humor to this thread.
| From the desk of cc2k: |
And I remind everyone, especially the RNC, of when Obama said “Public Will Have 5 Days To Look At Every Bill That Lands On My Desk”. We shall see.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5t8GdxFYBU
For a few months, they were sporadically posting links to a few bills in Thomas on the White House site. But they gave up on that back in June or July.
Don’t hold your breath for the White House on this issue.
Are you aware of H.Res 554? That’s a resolution in the house sponsored by Democrat Brian Baird out of Washington (the state of Washington, that is). It is a resolution to amend the Rules of the House to require legislation and conference reports be available (including online) for 72 hours before consideration by the House. The measure has 164 Cosponsors now. Check to see if your Congress Critter is among the good guys, and call or write them either to thank them for cosponsoring this, or to urge them to get with the program.
I think there is related motion to force this resolution to the floor for a vote, too, and the Cosponsors have almost universally cosponsored that motion as well.
keep exposing odumbo while he can
When fingers run three steps ahead of the brain...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.