26th
Health Care is alive & well in Congress
The Speaker & Democratic Leaders have been stating that since they don’t have the votes to pass the Senate-Christmas eve Health Care that sits in the House chamber, that the HC issue is dead. The Speaker needs to muster 218 votes to pass the bill and w/out changes made, she can’t get enough House members to vote yes. Majority Leader Reid has also announced that he no longer has the 60 votes needed to pass his old bill as amended by the House changes if it were to come back to the Senate chamber, thanks to the election of Sen. Brown (R-MA). This “code talk” doesn’t mean HC is dead. To the contrary! The Senate could take up the HC changes the Speaker needs to get her 218 votes under the budget reconciliation process. This reconciliation process only requires a majority vote to pass in the Senate & limits the debate to 20 hours. In the current Senate, the Majority Leader could lose up to 9 of his Senators and a 50/50 vote would prevail for the Senate Democrats with VP Biden voting to break the tie. While this process can’t be blocked, it does provide for additional amdts to be added at the end of the 20 hours, before the final vote. Typically the leader will allow any Senator offering an amdt 30 secs to explain the text before the vote. This writer was in the Senate for 20 of the 23 reconciliation bills ever passed by the Senate. I have seen 100’s of amdts offered at the of the 20 hours, called a vote-a-roma. This process is no way to reform or restructure 1/6th of our economy.
Send your Member of Congress a message about this process.
Watch the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA-KKJxXbBQ
Stay tuned,
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