“They could not have stopped the bill in Congress and they did not help pass it.”
WRONG!
To make a party read a bill in to the record in both houses of congress all that is required is for ONE (1) person to object to it not being read in to the record. The republican leadership told ALL members to NOT force a reading of the health care bill.
That is how they aided the democrats in the passage of this bill.
It also takes to memebers of the minority party to vote yea to get the bill out of committee, McConnel put the two biggest liberal republicans on the committee and let them vote the bill out of committee.
Reading of the bill could not have stopped passage. It does not require two members of the minority party to vote a bill out of committee.
While long, the bill was not infinite in length. This would ultimately have had no effect on passage. The GOP did not have the numbers at the time.
It also takes to memebers of the minority party to vote yea to get the bill out of committee, McConnel put the two biggest liberal republicans on the committee and let them vote the bill out of committee.
No it does not - it takes a majority vote of the overall membership. I don't know where you got this from, but it is not accurate.
The reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 2 on a straight party-line vote. http://townhall.com/columnists/phyllisschlafly/2012/02/07/day_of_reckoning_for_violence_against_women_act/page/full/
Senate Committee Approves Health Care Bill By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN Voting on strict party lines, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved a bill on Wednesday to revamp the nation’s health care system, as Democrats said that the legislation held the promise of more universal health coverage and more effective and affordable medical care while Republicans argued that the measure was unaffordable and would lead not to better care but to the denial of it. The committee vote was 13 to 10. The acting committee chairman, Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, had made clear from the start that his panel would bend little when it came to the top priorities of Senate Democrats and the Obama administration, including on a provision to create a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers that Republicans insisted was a deal-breaker. In the end however, Republicans held their ranks...http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/senate-committee-approves-health-care-bill/