Senate rules are in place prevent a tyrannical majority from abusing power...

[EagleKeeper]

A couple weeks for what? This bill and every provision in it has been under intense scrutiny for SEVEN MONTHS. That is an insanely long period of time for any bill. It has been debated longer than every bill the US has ever passed in its entire history except for one.

How long did the public have to evaluate the Nelson deal?
Was this deal in previous bills?

 

[fskimospy]

How long did the public have to evaluate the Nelson deal?
Was this deal in previous bills?

Well so far they've had a week or so and until the final passage of the bill another month, give or take. Did you need two months to look at it? Three? A year?

 

[piasabird]

This bill could bankrupt the united states or make finding a doctor so hard that none will be available. Be careful what you ask for.

 

[EagleKeeper]

How long did the public have to evaluate the Nelson deal?
Was this deal in previous bills?

Well so far they've had a week or so and until the final passage of the bill another month, give or take. Did you need two months to look at it? Three? A year?

And the public and even other Senators have been complaining about it.
that is why there should have been time from when the deals were cut and published until the final acceptance votes.
How many other deals were cut from the cloture vote to the bill vote because of the original backroom deals?
We will never know.

However, it looks like the House and some Senate Dems are starting to have second thoughts regarding what is missing or what has been added.

But I would suspect that political pressure from the Dem leadership will force a bad bill out the door just so they can state that they passed Health Care "REFORM"

 

[StageLeft]

back to healthcare. Well, the reason I'm sure this bill will suck is because the government in power currently sucks, because it spends time being sucked on by corporate interests, who are intent upon and very successful in sucking out of legislation what is actually good for the so-called represented.

I believe that too many of the supposed "compromises" with these bills are just compromises between what is actually good for citizens and what is good for corporate money masters.

And the republicans with their basically unanimous resistance against it, fvcking idiots the lot of them, just like the democrats with their lockstep partisan support for it. The whole system needs to be McCarthy-style scared straight.

Politics in the US has become ridiculous. Instead of 100 Senators you're down to only two players, two single minds, not 100 independent minds, but 2, democrat and republican. The rest is meaningless noise.

 

[Jaskalas]

Politics in the US has become ridiculous. Instead of 100 Senators you're down to only two players, two single minds, not 100 independent minds, but 2, democrat and republican. The rest is meaningless noise.

Proud member of the meaningless noise since 2008. Better than being part of the problem.

 

[fskimospy]

And the public and even other Senators have been complaining about it.
that is why there should have been time from when the deals were cut and published until the final acceptance votes.
How many other deals were cut from the cloture vote to the bill vote because of the original backroom deals?
We will never know.

However, it looks like the House and some Senate Dems are starting to have second thoughts regarding what is missing or what has been added.

But I would suspect that political pressure from the Dem leadership will force a bad bill out the door just so they can state that they passed Health Care "REFORM"

The final votes on the bill haven't even taken place yet, both chambers will have to vote on the bill again. Again, how long should they have to debate this bill before you are satisfied? It's already been the second longest in two hundred twenty years. Just let me know. Do they have to debate it for a year? Two years? Twenty years?

 

[Deeko]

This is another one of those situations where I say "Why?"

Maybe its not as big a deal as conservatives make it out to be. Maybe its not tyranny. But why is something like that in the bill? Why attempt to circumvent regular senate process, even if the constitutional scholars of ATPN say it won't matter? This just reeks of bad legislation to me.

 

[rudder]

The final votes on the bill haven't even taken place yet, both chambers will have to vote on the bill again. Again, how long should they have to debate this bill before you are satisfied? It's already been the second longest in two hundred twenty years. Just let me know. Do they have to debate it for a year? Two years? Twenty years?

Until they get healthcare reform right. This is not a minor change and needs to be done right.. not simply the way obama wants. Once you go down the rabbit hole...

Well so far they've had a week or so and until the final passage of the bill another month, give or take. Did you need two months to look at it? Three? A year?

Except our new "transparent" administration has allowed the Senate and House to work on the healthcare bill behind closed doors. Most likely the final revision will be released to the public within days of voting by congress.

So much for the open debate obama promised.

 

[fskimospy]

Until they get healthcare reform right. This is not a minor change and needs to be done right.. not simply the way obama wants. Once you go down the rabbit hole...





Except our new "transparent" administration has allowed the Senate and House to work on the healthcare bill behind closed doors. Most likely the final revision will be released to the public within days of voting by congress.

So much for the open debate obama promised.

Interesting that you now believe the Executive can dictate to the Legislature how they operate.

Basically your complaint now comes back to 'but I don't like the bill'. That's fine, at least that's an honest argument. The pathetic screeching for 'more debate' has always been a cover for 'i don't like this bill' anyway, and I'm glad to have it out in the open.

 

[Craig234]

back to healthcare. Well, the reason I'm sure this bill will suck is because the government in power currently sucks, because it spends time being sucked on by corporate interests, who are intent upon and very successful in sucking out of legislation what is actually good for the so-called represented.

I believe that too many of the supposed "compromises" with these bills are just compromises between what is actually good for citizens and what is good for corporate money masters.

And the republicans with their basically unanimous resistance against it, fvcking idiots the lot of them, just like the democrats with their lockstep partisan support for it. The whole system needs to be McCarthy-style scared straight.

Politics in the US has become ridiculous. Instead of 100 Senators you're down to only two players, two single minds, not 100 independent minds, but 2, democrat and republican. The rest is meaningless noise.

The mistake in your post is saying Democrats have one view. There is a war in the Democratic party between the corporatists including Obama, and the progressives.

For just one example, progressive Barney Frank is getting overpowered on his own committee because the corporatist Democrats put a big block of their people on his committee,with one woman controlling their votes and following the corporatist agenda, so he can't get a good bill out of his own committee - h had to compromise and gut it to get anything passed.

If we had a few more progressives elected, the combination of Republicans and corporatist Dems wouldn't be blocking the llegislation as they are where the last vote needed is Liebermann.

Bills with fewer compromises, that 'only ' had 51 or 55 or 58 votes would pass, without removing a public option and the other bad compromises and selllouts to the corporate demands.

More progressives is the fix.

 

[EagleKeeper]

The final votes on the bill haven't even taken place yet, both chambers will have to vote on the bill again. Again, how long should they have to debate this bill before you are satisfied? It's already been the second longest in two hundred twenty years. Just let me know. Do they have to debate it for a year? Two years? Twenty years?

How about 7 days from the compromise bill is stamped ready until Congress actually votes on it.

This will allow people and Congress itself to determine the delta set from what each chamber originally completed

 

[Darwin333]

I've discussed this previously, and you are not seeming to get the point.

I'll repeat.

There is a literal and a figurative issue here.

In the figurative sense of bribery, the use of giving someone something of value to get them to change their position for that reason, this and the normal way of legislatures making deals on all kinds of bills is 'bribery'.

If it's a condemnation of that practice in general, fine, that can be discussed.

But it's wrong to single this out - to say that the figurative bribery that happens all the time in Congress when a legislator asks for some money for his state to make a bill acceptable, is THE SAME as the literal bribery of when he takes a $100,000 cash payment for his own bank account to get him to vote against the public interest he represents - is wrong. To single this out as if it's some bizarre corrupt exception to the way things are usually done is wrong.

I'm not protesting the first use of the word bribery, I am when the people push it too far and try to pretend this case is such an unusual outrage comparable to taking cash for his own benefit.

If yhou can understand the distinction, great. I don't know hwo else to explain it to you. But my point has zero to do with any partisanship you allege.

I never said that this is an unusual case, it is in fact business as usual for Washington and THAT is what I am railing against. This just happens to be the latest case and the numbers are rather large.

As far as the distinction, I do understand how you are trying to explain that this is different from a normal bribe and I simply disagree with you. Do you truly believe that Nelson took this deal with no expectation of personal gain? The ONLY reason he took the deal was to help the people in his state?

He either took the deal with no expectation of personal gain or he took the deal with an expectation of personal gain. Regardless if the personal gain is votes in his reelection or actual money in his bank its a BRIBE. Both parties do it all the damn time and like I said before, people only get pissed if the other team does it. I am simply saying that its bullshit when either party does it. Call me crazy but I expect our representatives to not take or give bribes.

Our current system of "support my bullshit bill and I will support your bullshit bill" just gives us two bullshit bills. If you think that this practice is acceptable for our lawmakers than that is your opinion. On the other hand, I think it is exactly what it appears to be and that is legal bribery of elected officials.

Hell, even if you don't think that this is morally or ethically wrong the fact that it worked so well only further encourages its use by other members and could raise the bar on how much your vote is now "worth".

How many billions of your tax dollars are you willing to pay a particular Senator or Congressman's district in order to get a bill you like passed? A few hundred billion for a true single payer system maybe?

In my book, the ends do not justify the means when it comes to this type of nonsense regardless of the bill. OTOH, if you don't allow it to work the bastards in Washington would have to actually vote on the merits of the bill and not on what was give to their particular district/pet project.

 

[Darwin333]

The final votes on the bill haven't even taken place yet, both chambers will have to vote on the bill again. Again, how long should they have to debate this bill before you are satisfied? It's already been the second longest in two hundred twenty years. Just let me know. Do they have to debate it for a year? Two years? Twenty years?

I thought the actual text of the bill was crafted behind closed doors and only released to the entire Senate and the public a short period before it was voted upon to avoid "death panel" crap?

 

[dali71]

A little info on why Dems have to get around Republican obstructionism, as I recall from a radio show:

In the 1960's, percent of legislation the Republican minority did or threatened to filibuster: 8%
By the 1980's: 25%
After the Republicans lost Congress in 20076: 70%

Including Republicans filibustering a recent Department of Defense bill including pay for troops.

As the host put it, Republicans took a pretty much "anything goes to stop healthcare" position.

Name of radio show and link to statistics?

 

[retrospooty]

And the next Congress to come along writes a brief law "it shall be within the power of Congress to modify and repeal any subsections of <insert bill name here>".

Not too worried, the next pack of scum will figure out how to change it if they are so inclined.

Yup... that is pretty much engrained into the process from day one. Congress can always get together and change any law. Thats one of the things the founding fathers foresaw... the fact that they could never foresee all possibilities in the future and that there should be a way to change if the need arose.

It seems pretty well thought out... Except I am sure they never foresaw the pure corruption that goes on in Washington (on both sides of the aisle) and the public's apathy toward doing anything about it. They dont even do so much as to vote these asses out of office... or do do anything when the next set of asses does the same damn thing.

 

[rudder]

Interesting that you now believe the Executive can dictate to the Legislature how they operate.

Basically your complaint now comes back to 'but I don't like the bill'. That's fine, at least that's an honest argument. The pathetic screeching for 'more debate' has always been a cover for 'i don't like this bill' anyway, and I'm glad to have it out in the open.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A_-Qkb22zA

Not dictate, but suggest. afterall it was obama's idea.

 

[Craig234]

Name of radio show and link to statistics?

The info the show was quoting was the same study referenced in this Paul Krugman column.

http://www.sacbee.com:80/opinion/story/2413253.html

 

[jonks]

Unfortunately you are correct; justices take no oath to uphold and support the Constitution, most people just assume they do.

Update: turns out we were both wrong. Justices do in fact take such an oath.

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/about/textoftheoathsofoffice2009.pdf

 

[werepossum]

Update: turns out we were both wrong. Justices do in fact take such an oath.

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/about/textoftheoathsofoffice2009.pdf

Huh. I looked that up several years ago; either I screwed up then or I remembered it wrong.

Thanks for the correction.

 

[Deeko]

This is another one of those situations where I say "Why?"

Maybe its not as big a deal as conservatives make it out to be. Maybe its not tyranny. But why is something like that in the bill? Why attempt to circumvent regular senate process, even if the constitutional scholars of ATPN say it won't matter? This just reeks of bad legislation to me.

No response?

 

[werepossum]

No response?

Darned crickets!

 

[woolfe9999]

No response?

You probably didn't get an answer because no one knows why. I am skeptical of calling the entire bill "bad legislation" however, because of this one provision, even if the provision turns out to be a nullity because it isn't legal. It's a 2000+ page bill. It may in fact be a bad bill, even a very bad one, but not because of this in particular.

- wolf

 

[fskimospy]

No response?

I actually did respond. This is just speculation on my part and so it could be 100% wrong as there hasn't been a concrete statement on it.

I think that the telling part is the 'a member of Congress shall be out of order' part. A lot of the time people will try and tack on amendments and other bullshit to unrelated bills that they know have zero chance of passing just to score political points or to try and hold up/mess up other legislation. This would stop that from happening. Since there is the fact that if opponents to this bill were in the majority they could easily strip such language from the bill it appears to be something intended to limit minority action.