Remember, our sites deal in only the most scurrilous rumors and speculation. By necessity this post is kind of sketchy because at this point there is no Bill.
Now the grand plan is transparent- bulldoze through whatever will pass and toss it to the House/Senate Conference Committee so that they can, in secret, produce something truly horrible for the average Citizen and steal as much as possible for the Plutocratic .01% (want to know how many people make $5 Million a year or more? 43,000 out of 326,474,013).
Bill? We don’t need no stinkin’ Bill- we have Amendments. Amending what?
Did I mention we don’t need no stinkin’ Bill?
Now this is supposed to all comply with the Byrd Rule but several prominent elements have already been ruled against by the Senate Parliamentarian (who can, of course, simply be ignored by the chair) and should require 60 votes under regular order. One of them (my personal favorite), the 1 year moratorium on payments to Planned Parenthood, is a Constitutionally barred Bill of Attainder (no, you can’t just go and seize Exxon/Mobil by name because you don’t like them. I don’t like them either. You might perhaps be able to seize all Oil Companies, or even just those headquartered in Texas.).
Another is the coverage waiver that allows Insurance Companies to sell policies that don’t meet the Obamacare minimum services requirements. It’s already been ruled against once.
The two most prominently mentioned features, repeal of the individual and employer mandates, have not been decided on yet but it’s incredibly difficult to figure out how they meet the Byrd Rule and qualify for Reconciliation treatment (50 votes) as opposed to regular order.
But because debate is being carried out in the expedited fashion Reconciliation allows for the next 12 to 24 hours we’ll be churning through the “Vote-a-palooza” on amendments to a Bill that doesn’t exist. Two Democratic Senators, Merkley and Murphy, have produced about 250 between them, many poison pills designed simply to make Republicans look bad (kill people with colds? Sure. Why not? Disease factory menaces to Society.) at the end of which there’ll be a reading of the Bill (still not written yet so we don’t know what we’re Amending) as Amended and a vote, up or down.
And that, Ladies and Gents, is how sausage is made.
Dubious Constitutionality? Scrap of Paper. What emerges from this should be laughed out of Court but probably won’t.
Bush v. Gore
I found this article at least marginally informative.
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Vent Hole