More House machinations: those pesky rules

The New Neo Posted on by

They seem to be going for a straight up or down vote in the House on the Senate bill. Perhaps this means they have the 216 necessary votes—or perhaps they just have more votes for a straight up-or-down than for Demon Pass (otherwise known as the Slaughter solution).

And here’s that noted statesman, Democrat Rules Committee member Representative Alcee Hastings, on the importance of rules:

I wish that I had been there when Thomas Edison made the remark that I think applies here: “There ain’t no rules around here, we’re trying to accomplish something.” And therefore, when the deal goes down, all this talk about rules, we make them up as we go along.

Of course, Edison wasn’t bound by constitutional oaths or his duty to the people he represented or anything as silly as that. Neither are the Democrats, apparently. Leftist ends justify means, don’t you know?

So after this can they pass everything through reconciliation or the Slaughter solution?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve noticed a lot of discussion in the comments section of various conservative blogs that goes like this: once the HCR vote is over and if the Democrats succeed, what’s to stop them from passing their entire agenda via reconciliation and/or the Slaughter route?

I’m not a parliamentarian, but a possible answer that comes to my mind is this: forty-one Republicans in the Senate.

Unless I’m sadly misunderstanding the way it works—or unless the Democrats decide to suspend the remaining pretense of following any rules—the reason reconciliation and/or the Slaughter solution have both been considered as methods to be used to pass HCR is that HCR legislation had already passed in both House and Senate, albeit in different versions.

The House only needs a simple majority to pass its bills, but the Senate needs sixty votes to force cloture and have a vote. Before the election of Scott Brown, the Democrats in the Senate had those sixty votes for cloture, and that cut off debate and enabled HCR to be passed by that legislative body.

Remember the Brown campaign, and how he promised to be the 41st vote against health care? That pledge was predicated on the idea that the Democrats would be so statesmanlike as to follow the usual rules, iron out the disagreements between the Senate and House versions of the HCR bills in conference, and then have both houses vote on a new combined bill that would again need sixty votes for cloture in the Senate.

But the election of Scott Brown, and his pledge to block cloture, threw a monkey wrench into that process. And so the Democrats have jettisoned the entire procedure in their attempt to pass HCR, proposing to use the reconciliation and/or Slaughter gambits. We don’t know whether either will ultimately work, but we do know that both are predicated on the fact that the original HCR bill passed the Senate in the first place. If (and it’s a big “if”) in the future all forty-one Republicans hang tough to block legislation on new issues, then there will be no Senate bills on these topics to “reconcile” with House bills, and no Senate bills for the House to subsequently “deem” to have passed in the House as well. So reconciliation and/or Slaughter would be moot.

Of course, it HCR passes, and so many Democrats realize they won’t be re-elected as a result of their “yes” votes, then we’ve got something we’ve never had before: a rogue Senate majority party whose days as a controlling majority are numbered, composed of leftists in safe seats combined with other party members who’ve lost all hope of re-election, all dancing to the tune of “when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.” They could have the deep desire to pass whatever suits their fancy in whatever fashion they “deem” acceptable, and stick it to the American people even further, since they are no longer answerable to those people.

Who knows what the results of such a situation will be? But you can best believe they’re not likely to be good.

What are Stupak and Pelosi cooking up?

The New Neo Posted on by

Bart Stupak and Nancy Pelosi have been discussing a plan by which the House can amend the Senate HCR bill and change the abortion language that has been such a sticking point for him:

The deal calls for Stupak to have a vote on his amendment either before or after the House votes to confirm the Senate bill on Sunday. Stupak is confident that he has the votes to pass the measure, and is happy to have the vote after the House passes the Senate bill. He believes that by using a “tie bar” approach, his amendment would be “tied” to the health care bill ”” which would require just 51 votes in the Senate.

I have no idea why—if the House is required to pass the Senate bill as is, and any subsequent changes need to be accomplished through reconciliation, which can only be used for budgetary items—this sort of maneuver would be acceptable. Of course, until recently, I’d never even heard of “reconciliation” (at least in the parliamentary sense), so I certainly could be wrong here.

It seems there are other problems with this approach as well, not the least of which is that the pro-choice forces in the House are reported to be livid with rage about the possibility of getting the rug pulled out from under them once again, and are threatening to withhold their votes.

So, would the Stupak stipulation (I’m trying to coin my own alliterative nicknames) really garner enough votes to pass? And would he trust the Senate to approve the language when the bill goes back to that body for a vote? He certainly shouldn’t trust the Senate, which refused to do so the first time round. And if you don’t already have a headache trying to figure this all out, try pondering the following:

To that end, one version of the resolution apparently being discussed between Pelosi and Stupak would say that the Senate bill won’t be considered as having passed in the House until the Senate sends a message to the House stating that it has also passed the Stupak resolution, according to a knowledgeable Democratic aide.

Sounds a bit like time-travel to me.

But I’m not at all sure it really matters to Stupak whether his anti-abortion-funding language is actually in any final HCR bill. I assume we’ll know more today at 11:00 AM, when he is due to give a news conference. But remember when Stupak said this:

The ideal outcome, Stupak said, might be for the House Democratic leadership to get the votes they need without him and for the bill to pass.

“You know, maybe for me that’s the best: I stay true to my principles and beliefs,” he said, and “vote no on this bill and then it passes anyways. Maybe for me is the best thing to do.”

That indicates to me that all Stupak really wants is to make the appearance of opposing abortion funding, but would like the bill to pass otherwise even if it does fund abortions. Since Pelosi seems to require his vote for passage (otherwise she wouldn’t be giving him the time of day), he might indeed be satisfied as long as he is on record as voting against abortion funding.

This “tie bar” bill might give him the cover to do just that, while allowing the bill to pass. In effect, Stupak would be voting for the bill with abortion funding at approximately the same time he’s voting for the bill without abortion funding, if you know what I mean. And while that may be good enough for what passes for Stupak’s conscience, I doubt it would be good enough for his pro-life constituents.

[UPDATE: Well, as of this writing (12:30 PM), no press conference for Stupak. It may be moot because they may not need him after all. But they may. There’s a lot of blah-blah-blah on cable news, but no one knows nothin’—although the Corner says it has inside info that the Stupak deal is off. If Pelosi rejected it, you can bet it’s because she was informed she would be losing votes rather than gaining them by allowing it.

It also appears that “deem-and-pass,” otherwise known as the Slaughter solution or Demon Pass, is still very much in the picture.]

The fix is in on the doc fix…

The New Neo Posted on by

[UPDATE: I used the words “Politco claims” and “If true” in the following short post because there was something about the Politco report that didn’t smell quite right to me (maybe that “textual narrative” part? Too good to be true?). Turns out that Politico has just announced that the authenticity of the report has been challenged, and they’ve withdrawn the story. But the quote from Axelrod, which appeared in a completely different and unrelated article, seems authentic enough.]

…and Politico claims it has the smoking gun.

If true, would anyone who’s been paying a particle of attention be surprised by this? My only surprise is that Politico, not an especially conservative-friendly site, is reporting it.

And my favorite part of it all is the use of the phrase “textual narrative.” How very post-modern of them!

[NOTE: And I love, love, love this quote from David Axelrod about the behind the scenes machinations around the HCR bill and its passage: “There’s not been one minute of talk around the White House about what this means for Barack Obama’s presidency.”

Are they stark raving mad? Or do they think we are? Or both?]

If HCR passes—the next step, states’ rights?

The New Neo Posted on by

I was just listening to the tail end of an interview on Fox between Megyn Kelly and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer. Brewer was talking about the Tenth Amendment challenges planned by governors and attorney generals around the country if HCR passes. She sounded very determined, and said this was a bipartisan group.

One thing I noticed about Brewer was that she kept repeating that what we are seeing now in Congress is something she’s never seen or even imagined happening in her lifetime. She seemed stunned, as though she could not believe her eyes and ears.

Brewer is sixty-five years old (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), so she wasn’t exactly born yesterday. And yet she seems to think this is something sui generis in America. I happen to agree with her, and plan soon to write an article explaining why.

[ADDENDUM: A related and interesting idea.]

McArdle on the CBO score

The New Neo Posted on by

Shorter McArdle: the CBO scoring has become a joke, and the bill is a financial disaster. But nobody who wants to vote for it is listening or cares.

[NOTE: A while back, I made a similar point as McArdle on the uselessness of the CBO at this point. Congress has become like a virus that has figured out how to penetrate the defenses of the CBO scoring and overwhelm whatever truth it used to offer.]

Here are forty Representatives to pressure

The New Neo Posted on by

For what it’s worth, here are forty names judged to be on the HCR fence. You can call, write, and otherwise contact them in an attempt to increase the pressure. It’s especially important if you live in their districts, but anyone can join the fray.

I’m not sure whether the Pelosi smile and confidence right now are theater or not. I happen to think that she would not be scheduling a vote on Sunday if the thing weren’t already in the bag. But she’s certainly capable of that sort of bluff to increase the notion that it’s a done deal, and to discourage the opposition and encourage Democrats to get on that bandwagon and ride it.

So I think it’s still very worthwhile to make your voices heard in any way you can. By far the best thing would be to block this from happening, rather than to fight it afterward. But fight it afterward we will, if fight it afterward we must.

Working with Obama: Lindsey Graham on closing Guantanamo

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t know enough inside baseball to know exactly why Lindsey Graham is doing this. But I do know it’s the sort of thing that in the past earned him the rage of conservatives, and rightly so.

That Graham is willing at this point—even after the extreme hostility, demonizing, lack of cooperation, and utter disrespect displayed by Obama personally and this administration generally towards Republicans—to work with Obama on this matter is difficult to understand or justify. I’m with Andy McCarthy on the substantive problems with this agreement:

The good parts of the deal will be either things we’d have gotten anyway (like no civilian trial for KSM) or unenforceable (like promises that the Obama administration will be more open to using options other than the criminal justice system for top terrorists). The bad parts will be horrific, and no matter what Senator Graham says, he can’t do a thing about them: The place or places where the terrorists are held will become targets that we will have to spend tons of money to protect; the tons of money we have already spent to make Gitmo a first-rate, ideally secured facility, will be lost; and, most significantly, the physical presence in the U.S. of the detainees will mean they are unquestionably in the jurisdiction of the federal courts, where judges will be able to say the Constitution requires all sorts of remedies, including release.

And remember, all of this will be based on the fiction that Gitmo foments anti-U.S. terrorism ”” and to the extent the U.S. reputation in the world has been tarnished, much more of that has been done by the politicians who’ve attacked Gitmo than by the facility itself, which is a model.

And yet Graham forges on. His motivation is unknown to me, but here are some guesses:

(a) he really does believe that “bipartisanship” is some worthwhile goal in and of itself
(b) Obama has promised him something, and he’s naive enough to believe him
(c) he disagrees with McCarthy and believes that without an agreement Obama would be going the civilian justice route
(d) he likes the limelight and the power this gives him as the person to break an anti-cloture vote

The current situation in the post-Scott Brown election Senate is that, even though Brown gave the Republicans the magical 41st vote to stop cloture, it only works reliably when the Republican Party stands solidly and firmly and unanimously together (or if a Democrat or Democrats join them). Any Republican who goes against the group instantly becomes more spotlighted and more powerful than before—wooed and fawned over and catered to by the Democrats.

In the present case, Graham says he has two other Republicans ready to join him (wonder who they could be? My guess is a couple of women from Maine). So even if a few Democrats, or Joe Lieberman, vote with the Republicans against this, it’s a done deal, and Graham’s the “bipartisan” hero. However, I agree with McCarthy that Americans will be the losers. But hey, we’re getting used to that, aren’t we?

Obama and the law: about that little thing called “procedure”

The New Neo Posted on by

Ann Althouse, blogger and law professor who voted for Obama, has this to say about his pooh-poohing of procedural rules during his Bret Baier interview yesterday:

As if procedure is a frivolous sidetrack that only trivial or devious people care about. Barack Obama was a constitutional law professor. Much of constitutional law is about procedural rights and structural safeguards that check power. Justice Felix Frankfurter famously wrote: “The history of American freedom is, in no small measure, the history of procedure.” Law professors are seriously engaging with the constitutionality of the “deem and pass,” and our erstwhile law professor Barack Obama would imperiously wave procedure aside as a distraction not worthy of his time. Let’s concentrate on the end and pay no attention to the means. When the most powerful man in the world says that, we should feel revulsion and alarm.

Hear, hear!

The election of 2008: not listening to Cassandra

The New Neo Posted on by

I remember how concerned and driven I felt during the last couple of months leading up to the 2008 election. I had become quite convinced that Obama was an opportunistic, lying, corrupt, far-left ideologue who would sacrifice his own grandmother (and did) for the sake of power.

I believed it would be devastating for the country if he were to be elected along with what promised to be a strongly Democratic House and Senate. There seemed no way to stop Congress from going that route, but up until the last month or so prior to the election I thought it was possible to stop Obama, because the polls were very close.

I felt I needed to do what I could. I’m only one person, but I can reach quite a few people through this blog. And I figured my readers would do their bit to spread the word, too. And then there were so many more in the blogosphere and the media doing the same thing, people with a lot more readers than I.

In my private life, I talked to those of my friends whom I judged to be at least somewhat on the fence and open to argument and information. I knew most people don’t spend the amount of time I do reading about these things, so I sent relevant links to certain open-minded friends who had said they wouldn’t mind receiving them.

And I talked. Politics and the candidates came up a lot in conversation back then (as opposed to now), and I would describe things Obama had done back in Chicago, as well as statements he’d made during the campaign that were troubling and extremist.

But I noticed that although people would usually listen politely, nothing seemed to reach them. There was always a “yes, but.” Yes, but he said such good things and seemed so trustworthy. Yes, but I didn’t have any proof that he really knew about (Ayers, Wright, fill in the blank). Yes, but Obama would raise our standing in the world. Yes, but McCain was too old. Yes, but it was time for a change.

So gradually, and with mounting concern, I realized that there was nothing I could do, especially after the well-timed financial crisis. By election day I had pretty much lost hope, although I tried not to be a complete downer on this blog—but the only hope I really retained was the hope that I’d been wrong about Obama, and that he would end up being the person my friends thought he was.

That hope could only be nurtured for the first month or two after the inauguration before it had to be thrown into the dustbin of history. And in fact, Obama has been even worse than I expected, more openly doctrinaire and less incremental, as well as more ruthless and unashamed in his Orwellian lies.

Now it’s too late to stop Obama from being elected, of course. But when I look back, I realize that it was always too late once Obama threw his hat into the ring (unless you go back decades, before the Gramscian march of leftism through the schools and the press). Maybe it’s just human nature, but whatever it was that Obama appealed to in supporters (gullibility? naive hope?) was too powerful and too widespread to be stopped, especially without the support of the MSM.

I have never before had the experience of watching a debacle unfold, reading and writing about it day by slow day, and feeling unable to stop it despite so much effort. But that’s the way it’s been for about a year and a half now. I don’t even get the satisfaction of saying “I told you so” to my friends, because they’re not paying attention at this point (or at least not talking about things). It is as though politics does not exist for them.

Now we must rely on that most unlikely of bulwarks against tyranny—the moderate Democrats in the House, and the creativity and spine of the remaining Republicans in the Senate—and the possibility of righting things in the elections of 2010 and 2012.