Word: bille
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spent another day wooing votes for a package of still largely unknown changes to the Senate health bill that would bring it more in line with the House bill that passed last year, the GOP line of attack seemed to be gathering momentum. The delayed Congressional Budget Office estimate of how the revamped bill would affect the federal deficit has created a convenient opening for Republicans to shift the narrative from the substance of the Democratic legislation to the process by which it may be passed through Congress. (See the top 10 health care reform...
...parliamentary maneuver that Pelosi is strongly considering and which Republicans vigorously object to (despite having used it themselves often in the past) would have the House "deem" the Senate bill as passed without directly voting on it. The political upside to this is that House members could tell constituents they never voted in favor of the original Senate bill, which contains several unsavory sweetheart deals that the package of fixes would strip away. "The public is already uncomfortable with the process, and this just makes it worse," says Democratic Representative Jason Altmire, who previously voted against health reform and whose...
...Many Dems' insistence that the maneuver would help them gain political cover in the 2010 election season doesn't make much sense; it's not as if Republicans won't hammer House Democrats over health reform anyway, even if the Dems didn't technically vote for the more controversial bill. For their part, Republicans have previously used the simple-majority reconciliation process many times to pass legislation, even as they vilify Senate Democrats for trying to use the same procedure to make changes to the health bill they passed late last year with a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority. House...
...similar ruckus during the 2005 passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug Program, when majority leader Tom DeLay threatened to derail the congressional candidacy of one member's son and threatened to withhold funds for then Representative Jim DeMint's Senate race if he didn't vote for the bill. On final passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) later that year, to gain Representative Robin Hayes' vote, GOP leaders promised that they would help steer business to a textile company in his district. But these threats, sweetheart deals and rule-bending votes were long forgotten by the next...
...course, the intended audience for the GOP talking points on process isn't really the American public. It's nervous House Democrats wondering about the political costs of voting for reform. "We've got to put all the pressure we can on these Democrats to make sure this bill never, ever happens," says House minority leader John Boehner...