"As a result, a new plan would call for the House to pass the Senate bill and send it to Obama. The Senate would then use budget reconciliation rules to make several changes demanded by House Democrats. Those rules prohibit filibusters."
Interesting. I wonder why the democrats didn't think of this right away? Everyone was saying the bill was dead when that republican senator got elected right?
I'm sure the house leadership had the plan worked out pretty quickly, it just takes time to work out the details with the Senate leadership, then communicate it to the >250 democrats in the House and line up the required number of votes.
Was the plan hard to figure out for the media and other commentators? Probably, because they don't have access to the House rules people, nor do they think about procedural maneuvers all day.
In retrospect, passing two bills was a very elegant solution. By passing the Senate version straight up, they guarantee that at least some version of victory is achieved without having to deal with the 59 seat issue. Then sending an amendment package back to the Senate with only carefully chosen amendments that allow the reconciliation maneuver gives it a decent shot despite the loss of the supermajority. Had they tried to pass one bill that combined the original and the amendments, the filibuster could have killed it.
The rules for reconciliation say that the changes must only be financial in nature, ie, if you decided to subsidize all boat builders it would make sense for reconciliation to change the amount of the subsidy. But not add some new program for elephant trainers. That would be out of bounds.
The reason reconciliation was set up was so that the financial numbers could be tweaked with minimum fuss on bills whose policies were already voted for by the Senate.
Comments
from: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/print/62051
"As a result, a new plan would call for the House to pass the Senate bill and send it to Obama. The Senate would then use budget reconciliation rules to make several changes demanded by House Democrats. Those rules prohibit filibusters."
What reconciliation rules they are I don't know.
Interesting. I wonder why the democrats didn't think of this right away? Everyone was saying the bill was dead when that republican senator got elected right?
Was this procedure hard to figure out?
I'm sure the house leadership had the plan worked out pretty quickly, it just takes time to work out the details with the Senate leadership, then communicate it to the >250 democrats in the House and line up the required number of votes.
Was the plan hard to figure out for the media and other commentators? Probably, because they don't have access to the House rules people, nor do they think about procedural maneuvers all day.
In retrospect, passing two bills was a very elegant solution. By passing the Senate version straight up, they guarantee that at least some version of victory is achieved without having to deal with the 59 seat issue. Then sending an amendment package back to the Senate with only carefully chosen amendments that allow the reconciliation maneuver gives it a decent shot despite the loss of the supermajority. Had they tried to pass one bill that combined the original and the amendments, the filibuster could have killed it.
The rules for reconciliation say that the changes must only be financial in nature, ie, if you decided to subsidize all boat builders it would make sense for reconciliation to change the amount of the subsidy. But not add some new program for elephant trainers. That would be out of bounds.
The reason reconciliation was set up was so that the financial numbers could be tweaked with minimum fuss on bills whose policies were already voted for by the Senate.