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Predictions?
Timeline on Senate Vote?
- Thread starter ins.dave
- Start date
- 10,275
Before Dec 31
- Thread starter
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- 990
Hmmmmm.
I don't know. I'd sure like to think so.
What is the worst case scenario? Could they milk this teet into the midterm?
- 2,908
For me the short answer is : I don't know but it is not clear to me that the bill will ever come up for Senate vote.
To splain further:
To me the real hero of the dem victory last night was Clayburn the Majority Whip. He accurately gave Pelosi a precision assessment of what the line for votes was. You would have to have a mind and nerves of steel to do that in that situation because it was about like defusing a bomb. Sure, the dems are feeling good today but there is not one of them that doesnt know that if they had tried to run with the vote a day or even an hour sooner or later it might have failed and derailed the whole thing. The vote was soooooooooo close that they can only feel cocky for about an hour and then worry about getting it through the Senate which is even less receptive than the house. Next time you try to run with the bill you could miss the mark and they know it.
So in regard to the timing in the Senate, we dont know because they are going to dance as long as it is needed in conference committee until they can get a feel for what will fly and what wont, just as they did in the house. Very very tricky though. If they cant get a good feeling about it they are going to keep rolling it until it is sufficiently amended to be palatable and it is still not clear that that can be done.
Certainly if you are wondering when the bill in current form is going to be flopped out before the senate for an up or down vote, then I can say unequivocally that simply is never going to happen. They are not going to take the chance of running an up or down vote where if it does not pass the repubs will say the peoples representatives have voted and now we need to move on. They did that in the house because they had to, because there is so far to go and you have to get on with it sooner or later even if there are risks.
I wouldnt expect much before the end of January and I doubt very much that they will try to run with it or if they do it will be an amended version that looks nothing like the current form. About February or so they will begin to think about the elements of health care reform that they can agree upon and then adopting them piecemeal. I personally doubt that either the senate or the house will try to run with comprehensive bill but will try to consolidate whatever gains can be had. In other words, take Clintons advice from hillarycare which was they be prepared to go with "half a loaf."
I am going to replay one point and then let it ago. In the end the person who will derail the public option and move it over to a public option with trigger is Olympia Snowe. Yes I understand that she is being shunned by folks here, by the Republican Party, and by Obama because Rahm is smart enough to know that she is the most powerful woman in America and he knows what she is up to even if everyone here thinks she is a turncoat whore. Her plan at this time is just to stay out of presenting an amendment for a trigger because they scorned her by not putting it in at the Committee level. She is shrewd enough to know how long to let them flop around and that that needs to be a long, long time but that eventually they can be bumped off to Plan B. The person she is working backchannel with on this is Mary Landrieu the Dem Senator from Louisiana. I am still betting on her- not Obama when it comes to the public option. It has been established that I am biased but be careful because sometimes bias is based on knowledge. and knowledge is sometimes based on experience in hand to hand combat with the beast at hand. Olympia is very formidable opponent equal to Obama or Rahm any day of the week. And yes I know she is not a looker.
Olympia and Landrieu and the blue dogs and Lieberman etc. understand what the beltway, Obama, Pelosi, and some here do not.: IT'S ABOUT THE FRIGGING ECONOMY. What we talk about for weekend political entertainment here is not what they are talking about out on main street in your community. Many of the republicans understand it too by they are not close enough to the health reform process to do anything other than bitch about and respond to what is happening. That is fine unless it all gets so far down the road that they need to be at the front of the bus to at least keep it from going off the cliff.
To splain further:
To me the real hero of the dem victory last night was Clayburn the Majority Whip. He accurately gave Pelosi a precision assessment of what the line for votes was. You would have to have a mind and nerves of steel to do that in that situation because it was about like defusing a bomb. Sure, the dems are feeling good today but there is not one of them that doesnt know that if they had tried to run with the vote a day or even an hour sooner or later it might have failed and derailed the whole thing. The vote was soooooooooo close that they can only feel cocky for about an hour and then worry about getting it through the Senate which is even less receptive than the house. Next time you try to run with the bill you could miss the mark and they know it.
So in regard to the timing in the Senate, we dont know because they are going to dance as long as it is needed in conference committee until they can get a feel for what will fly and what wont, just as they did in the house. Very very tricky though. If they cant get a good feeling about it they are going to keep rolling it until it is sufficiently amended to be palatable and it is still not clear that that can be done.
Certainly if you are wondering when the bill in current form is going to be flopped out before the senate for an up or down vote, then I can say unequivocally that simply is never going to happen. They are not going to take the chance of running an up or down vote where if it does not pass the repubs will say the peoples representatives have voted and now we need to move on. They did that in the house because they had to, because there is so far to go and you have to get on with it sooner or later even if there are risks.
I wouldnt expect much before the end of January and I doubt very much that they will try to run with it or if they do it will be an amended version that looks nothing like the current form. About February or so they will begin to think about the elements of health care reform that they can agree upon and then adopting them piecemeal. I personally doubt that either the senate or the house will try to run with comprehensive bill but will try to consolidate whatever gains can be had. In other words, take Clintons advice from hillarycare which was they be prepared to go with "half a loaf."
I am going to replay one point and then let it ago. In the end the person who will derail the public option and move it over to a public option with trigger is Olympia Snowe. Yes I understand that she is being shunned by folks here, by the Republican Party, and by Obama because Rahm is smart enough to know that she is the most powerful woman in America and he knows what she is up to even if everyone here thinks she is a turncoat whore. Her plan at this time is just to stay out of presenting an amendment for a trigger because they scorned her by not putting it in at the Committee level. She is shrewd enough to know how long to let them flop around and that that needs to be a long, long time but that eventually they can be bumped off to Plan B. The person she is working backchannel with on this is Mary Landrieu the Dem Senator from Louisiana. I am still betting on her- not Obama when it comes to the public option. It has been established that I am biased but be careful because sometimes bias is based on knowledge. and knowledge is sometimes based on experience in hand to hand combat with the beast at hand. Olympia is very formidable opponent equal to Obama or Rahm any day of the week. And yes I know she is not a looker.
Olympia and Landrieu and the blue dogs and Lieberman etc. understand what the beltway, Obama, Pelosi, and some here do not.: IT'S ABOUT THE FRIGGING ECONOMY. What we talk about for weekend political entertainment here is not what they are talking about out on main street in your community. Many of the republicans understand it too by they are not close enough to the health reform process to do anything other than bitch about and respond to what is happening. That is fine unless it all gets so far down the road that they need to be at the front of the bus to at least keep it from going off the cliff.
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Winter - A significant correction. Conference committee is after the Senate votes, then they both vote again, on the conferenced bill.
I feel pretty strongly that they got this through the house last night because of this. It was basically a lot of 'Oh, don't worry about that being in there or this isn't in there, we'll fix it in conference, lets just get it passed for now'.
When it comes for the real vote, after conference, it will be more like, 'Oh, don't worry about that, we'll pass fixes for that later, like we do with medicare every year'. And so goes the legislation sausage process.
Now, the pressure is on the Senate to pass this. I would expect them to try to do this before the end of the year, but, the vote counts are different in the Senate. If they could do it with 50, they would be off to the races. They can't (without reconciliation). They need 60, which happens to be the number of democrat votes in the Senate, but they can't get all the dems to vote for it, just like in the house, they couldn't get all the dems to vote for it.
Dan
I feel pretty strongly that they got this through the house last night because of this. It was basically a lot of 'Oh, don't worry about that being in there or this isn't in there, we'll fix it in conference, lets just get it passed for now'.
When it comes for the real vote, after conference, it will be more like, 'Oh, don't worry about that, we'll pass fixes for that later, like we do with medicare every year'. And so goes the legislation sausage process.
Now, the pressure is on the Senate to pass this. I would expect them to try to do this before the end of the year, but, the vote counts are different in the Senate. If they could do it with 50, they would be off to the races. They can't (without reconciliation). They need 60, which happens to be the number of democrat votes in the Senate, but they can't get all the dems to vote for it, just like in the house, they couldn't get all the dems to vote for it.
Dan
- 2,908
Ahhh. fair enough, I think. There is the issue of conference committee arising because the house has the bill and then it goes to the Senate and gets marked up and amended and needs to go back to the house to see if the house will take it as amended.
But I guess my mind slid off to the other scenario which is that the house passes a bill that is up for consideration but in the meantime the Senate passes a separate but similar bill (such as is fact in process) and then you have to deal with how to conference and reconcile both of those or whether you are just going to let them overlap. Say for instance the house bill is in the process of being sent over to the Senate but in the meantime the Senate passes its own bill. Oy. I yield to your knowledge there but that is the scenario I was thinking of.
Normally I would have expected Mr. Obama to have his own legislation and have someone sponsor it and then run it from one chamber to the next and conference back and forth as needed. Instead we had a shotgun approach where he did nothing but observed both chambers introduce different bills at the same time to crossfire back and forth. Oy. What if the Senate just says " we dont want to review the house bill until we have voted on our own bill." I am nor procedurally smart enough to figure out how some of that works. Possibly they havent figure it out either yet which doesnt help.
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- Thread starter
- #7
- 990
Alright, that's it.
First your salivatory sexist rants about Queen Pelosi, now this?
I'm reporting you to MunchMel.
P.S. I hear Lady O is good for 3 inputs?
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It happens frequently that the Senate and the house pass different but similar bills, which is what will happen here, unless something changes.
In truth, the flow you are talking about is the least risky, simply because it can happen faster and has fewer votes. Take the house bill, amend it, fold, staple, mutilate, as you see fit, vote, then send it back to the house, hope the house passes as amended. Keeps the Senate from a second chance.
House bill won't get through the Senate, the Senate bill won't get through the house.
If they want to pass via budget reconcilation, then I think they have to start with the house bill, since tax changes apparently have to pass the house first (something I didn't know till recently, and still not sure is correct).
The road forward is not paved. In fact, it's only been gone down a few times before, and it's been a while, the path is very overgrown and has a few surprises along the way.
The only thing I really know??? I do not have a desire to be a congressman or senator. They don't get paid enough to take the abuse we give them, so the smart people don't take the job.
Dan
In truth, the flow you are talking about is the least risky, simply because it can happen faster and has fewer votes. Take the house bill, amend it, fold, staple, mutilate, as you see fit, vote, then send it back to the house, hope the house passes as amended. Keeps the Senate from a second chance.
House bill won't get through the Senate, the Senate bill won't get through the house.
If they want to pass via budget reconcilation, then I think they have to start with the house bill, since tax changes apparently have to pass the house first (something I didn't know till recently, and still not sure is correct).
The road forward is not paved. In fact, it's only been gone down a few times before, and it's been a while, the path is very overgrown and has a few surprises along the way.
The only thing I really know??? I do not have a desire to be a congressman or senator. They don't get paid enough to take the abuse we give them, so the smart people don't take the job.
Dan
- 2,908
Most excellent commentary. Thank you.
In regard to the tax piece having to start in the House, that actually is in Article 1 of the Constitution. It refers to revenue bills and originating in the house, whatever. In that Article somewhere.
You refer to the reconciliation process and having to start in the house etc but in addition there is one major, major issue with the reconciliation process beyond the political fall-out from ramming something through: The reconciliation process can only act upon budget issues (or issues with budget implications perhaps I should say) and there are key aspects of the bill that would be a stretch to call a budget issue especially since the administration asserts that they are revenue neutral. Example: Mandated coverage, guaranteed issue, etc. That is the big bugaboo there beyond the political fall-out. And then there are fuzzy areas such as the public option. They could arguably use reconciliation to ram through a bill for seed money for them but could not use the process to outline the architecture of the program . So you are asking Congress to "sorta" know what they are funding when they vote on it in reconciliation. Lots of fun ahead with that one too.
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