Saturday, March 13, 2010

House Democrats appear set to pass Senate bill without voting on it

Here’s the reason Democrats are using such a complicated procedure: many in the House completely do not trust the Senate to pass fixes to the bill passed by the Senate in December. But according to the rules of reconciliation, the House must go first in passing the Senate bill and passing a reconciliation fix.

So House Democrats have been searching for a way to alleviate members’ concerns that if they vote for the Senate bill and the Senate does nothing to fix it, they will be hung out to dry as having supported a piece of legislation that many across the country dislike, either for spending reasons, or because of special provisions like the extra money for Nebraska’s Medicaid population (the “Cornhusker kickback”).

Technically, using the “Slaughter solution,” they’ll never have voted for the bill they find odious, even if their vote on the reconciliation legislation will have been the vote that passed the Senate bill into law.


SOURCE: The Daily Caller