Posted on 03/16/2010 3:34:49 AM PDT by Man50D
What is wrong with you?
LLS
All true.
LLS
Thank you.
LLS
The Republicans can't do anything preemptively to stop it, other than warning the general public about the trick/deception being employed.
I agree with you that it will go to SCOTUS if the measure is taken, but it will be a GOP conrgesscritter (House and/or Senate, possibly even with some Democrats such as Stupak) bringing the action, because there is no doubt that they will have standing.
Which people? The ones that voted these assclowns (in both Parties) into office?
Careful going down that road. The end of it is anarchy.
Besides, you’re playing word games to get on the road in the first place.
What would they do if a million people showed up in DC toting their rifles and demanding that the law be followed by their representatives? Would they do a Tieneman square?
What will it take to defend the rule of law in this country? Simply declaring a bill is the law, without a vote? Why not just have Obama sign a senate bill he modifies himself? It would be just as constitutional...
And makes an already unconstitutional action even more so.
Imagine that there is a recorded vote for the Senate bill that has no corresponding recorded vote in the House.
And worse, the combined reconciliation bill/Senate bill has a recorded vote in the house, but no corresponding recorded vote in the Senate.
But now we throw in the worst of all — the reconciliation part of the reconciliation/Senate bill that passed in the house is REJECTED by the senate — so the ONE thing that actually had a recorded vote in the house FAILS TO BECOME LAW.
Has there ever in the history of our country been a law that takes effect when there hasn’t been a single recorded vote that passed both houses in ANY form?
You might as well just have Obama combine the house and senate bills himself, and sign them into law, declaring that “each of them passed their respective house”.
It would be as constitutional.
No, at the end of that road are either impeachment proceedings, or Romanian Term Limits.
Exactly.
What bothers me is that, for all the talk about how “self-executing rules” have been used in the past, EVERY case has involved writing some amendment into a bill that was going to the floor. The bill was still voted on, so members still had to vote on the language that was put in the bill.
The rule was used so they didn’t have to have a separate vote on the language being inserted into the bill. Remember, for bills in the house, they can do the same thing by inserting manager’s amendments at the committee level, and only the committee votes.
In this case, they are not inserting the senate bill language into a new bill in the house — that would be a valid use of the self-executing rule, and is how they would role senate amendments into a house bill if the senate had decided to start with the house bill and amend it. It allows the house to NOT have to vote on each senate amendment, or any at all, but simply to vote on the resulting amended bill.
But now they are trying to say that they can actually enact into law the Senate bill by a rule; that bill will NOT be roled into legislation to be considered on the floor, but will go directly to the President, even if there is never another vote on the floor than the rule.
Now, you could argue that the RULE is the VOTE. But that isn’t constitutional, because the RULE is both the Senate bill AND the rules. THe text is the Senate BILL Plus the rules they will follow for the next bill. The constitutional clearly states that for a bill to become law, it must pass both houses. And the Supreme Court has ruled that the bill must have the exact same language when it is voted on in both houses.
So under ANY interpretation possible, this is unconstitutional, and if they try it, they have violated their oaths of office, and should be removed from office and placed in handcuffs as enemies of our state.
The constitutional issues is not the “yeas and neas”. It is that for a bill to be considered “passed” by both bodies, it must be passed in an identical language.
The Supreme Court has ruled on this issue, in the guise of overturning the line-item-veto law (in case you think the SC doesn’t overturn laws passed by congress).
They argued that if the President removes part of a bill, the remainder of the bill was never voted on by both bodies in the language it is enacted, and therefore the veto was unconstitutional.
In this new rule, the issue is that the house will not “pass” the Senate bill by itself, but will do so along with language bringing another bill to the floor. That’s if they write the rule so that the Senate bill is enacted with the RULE.
However, if they write a rule that says the Senate bill is enacted with the passing of the reconciliation bill, THEN the language passed is the Senate bill PLUS the reconciliation bill. That means it isn’t the same language as the Senate, which just passed the Senate bill.
Worse, the Senate won’t later vote on the combined bills; AND it might not even pass the reconciliation bill, meaning that the end result would be identical to the “line-item-veto” question, where the Senate has “vetoed” part of the legislation passed by the house, and therefore the remainder (the Senate bill) will not be legally passed.
It’s too dangerous a game to count on it, but I certainly hope the Republicans already have a brief ready for an emergency appeal to the court, should the House attempt to send the Senate bill to Obama for a signature on the basis of either a vote on the rule, or a vote on the reconciliation bill.
If they were confident that they would win, I could actually see them encouraging Pelosi to try this, because by the time the dust settled, it would be too late to use reconciliation and they’d have to start over again.
Of course, a snowstorm would be good right now, or anything that shut down the city for a few days.
That vote for the Stupak amendment in the house is looking pretty foolish right now.
Gay.
Reid should consult Nicolae Ceausescu on these matters and get back with us on what he says. :-)
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.