Tell me if you’ve ever faced the following situation. You want to carry two things upstairs. You are holding one, but because of the awkward shape of the second item you can’t pick it up without putting the first item down. In other words, you picked these two items up in the wrong order and you have to start over by picking the second item up first and then the first item after that. Has that ever happen to you?
That’s the basic situation that the Democrats in the House are facing with the health care bill. They want to just vote on the reconciliation part of the bill because it doesn’t include the crappy stuff that is in the Senate bill. In fact, the reconciliation bill explicitly eliminates the crappy stuff in the Senate bill. Unfortunately, they have to carry both bills up the stairs and they can’t carry the reconciliation bill until they have first picked up the more awkward Senate bill.
By using a rule that allows them to pick up both items at the same time, they avoid the problem with picking them up sequentially. It’s like a magic tool, like a powerful magnet, that solves the problem. But at the end of the day nothing else has changed. The same two items are carried up the stairs.
Now, consider the following:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has acknowledged that Democrats are considering the option in part because votes for the Senate bill are hard to come by, and in part to shield members from attacks directed at their support for certain provisions in the Senate bill, including the “Cornhusker Kickback.”
Republicans have pounced on the issue, and many took to the floor Tuesday to decry the tactic as an avoidance of responsibility and potentially unconstitutional.
How is it an avoidance of responsibility to avoid voting for something you are going to eliminate five minutes later? It’s as if the Republicans are demanding that, having picked up the wrong item first you make two trips up the stairs instead of using your magic magnet. It’s one of the stupidest arguments I’ve ever heard. Of course, we wouldn’t need a magic magnet if there were fewer Democrats afraid of stupid arguments.
I once told myself that I could get all of the who knows how many things up 3 flights of stairs in one trip. I did and cracked a wrist bone. Not smart.
I do respect Nancy Pelosi.
The repubs are really scared of HCR.
The White House and Nancy Pelosi should hire you as a communications consultant, because neither has done an adequate job of explaining this procedure. Instead, we have Republicans, aided by the press, distorting it just like they distorted end of life counseling. You remember how that turned out, right? Democrats can not let the meme take hold that they are using “trickery” or “shenanigans” or “avoiding an actual vote”. If they weren’t prepared to defend the process, they shouldn’t have put it out there for relentless attack and distortion. Couple that with Clyburn announcing a delay of 2 ½ weeks for a vote and Hoyer unabashedly announcing they don’t have the votes, you have a disaster in the making. Or should I say circus? The litle ring master has scheduled a 10am news conference to announce the 101 reasons he won’t support the bill. But should we be surprised? Afterall, these are Democrats we’re talking about.
They don’t seem to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time let alone figure out how to carry two bags upstairs at the same time. But they are good for entertainment.
if Obama had had the balls to fight for a real health care bill from the beginning. His compromises and capitulations have created a piece of shit that nobody’s passionate about.
Over a year has been pissed away and that is not the fault of Dennis Kucinich.
Looks like Jason Altmire took the bait.
Of course the Reps are trying to pounce on it. It’s what they do. Is this really worth talking about?
The only thing I can think of to make it sound anything remotely close to semi-reasonable is that the idea is to prevent the making of another “I voted for it before I voted against it” ad.
At least, with 1 vote for both, the making of such an ad won’t be nearly so straightforward.
It is just time to tell any Democrat who doesn’t vote for Healthcare do not expect funding from Democrat Congressional Committee. And for Move.On.Org to find a candidate who will..or willing replacement.
Democrats need to Just stop being nice…Republicans aren’t nice they want to allow 45,000 people a year to continue dying.
I can’t believe how juvenile the Republican leadership has been, or maybe they really have no leadership and the fools are running the ship.
They are almost parodies of themselves, they lie unabashedly even though we can “roll tape” and expose their lies. They then just ignore the response and continue to lie, the media plays along, calls it an opposing view or something. They keep on lying….someone takes a poll to find out how well the lie worked. Bingo, the idiots are answering their phones for the pollsters and spewing forth the lies they heard Rush, Glenn, Bill O., and basically the whole cast of Fox News and the right wing radio cesspool spew forth.
We are living in a National Lampoon movie, I swear.