No 216 Necessary.
Republican Burkean Thaddeus McCotter is relaxed and succinct in a colloquy with Democratic knight-errant Chris Van Hollen, narrated by the sprightly Chuck Todd, a well-matched trio of savvy, articulate and polite observers of the healthcare debate. The healthcare tangle now turns to a peculiar state of anticipation as the Democrats proceed cagily to a test vote next week. David Drucker tells me that the new twist is that the House brains and the White House geniuses are exploring a rule that will allow the Senate bill, passed December 24, 2009, by 60-40, to go the POTUS for signature without the House voting on it. The trick is to convince the scholars and the Senate Parliamentarian to allow the House to vote on the sidecar fix of the Senate bill, and to vote on it, alone (which requires only 51 votes in the Senate to pass); and this vote will be understood as validating the original December Senate bill. The fear in the House is that the Democrats must vote on the Senate monster of a bill that is filled with pork and folly -- and that these 216 votes will be held against the House members. The fear grows that, if the House first votes on the original bill, which contains unacceptable items such as the Cornhusker exemption and the abortion funding, this may be the only piece that passes muster, leaving the 216 House members exposed for having approved a mess that cannot be fixed. Of course, this is all monumentally confusing. It will require much scholarship to make the case that the original bill can go to the POTUS for his signature without a House vote. The GOP is already shouting. The media columns have not started to explain to the public how it is possible to avoid the vote. Terra incognita. This is what civil war looks like in the early rounds. Comity and trust are in the museum. Swords unsheathed for Monday 15.
Test Count.
Drucker tells me that the committee will report out pieces of the sidecar bill starting on Monday 15. These have not been scored by the CBO. There is a deal of bluff here, and a measure of showmanship as well, and the Democrats go into the weekend without a clear way to get to 216 either for the original or for the sidecar. Note the McCotter inference (above) that the reason the House members were held in Washington on a Friday -- supposedly to vote on the wonderful but tangential anti-algae bill -- was that this gave Mrs. Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel more opportunity to hammer the reluctant and wrecked in their own caucus. Algae. Worms. Bait. The metaphors write themselves.
"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communists.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."
The above is a popular quote attributable to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group. The present ‘health care’ drama is a classic modern-day example of just what the good German pastor was talking about. Legislators are being given a false choice to vote either yes or no on a deeply flawed bill. In effect, they’ve been given a loaded gun. Either way they vote, they fatally damage themselves and, with it, their institution.
Some of our representatives have already recognized the ploy. After a long and prolific career sucking at the public troth, they have recused themselves; jumped ship. It was the only way to avoid a virtual bloodbath of embarrassment. Their intimate and long association with Washington high jinx has taught them that the gig is now up; that the progressives now rule; and that there are no longer any rules.
They recognized that they’ve been playing along without it ever having occurred to them that some day they too might stand in the cross hairs. They’d stood by and watched as the courts have been polluted; as once mighty industrialists and financiers have been dragged in front of congressional kangaroo courts and publicly castrated; as the desperate cries of the American people have been deliberately ignored; as our country’s founders have been discredited; our Constitution shredded; our press hobbled; religion disparaged; etc.
There’s no one left to save them now. Even the occasional sane utterance is but spit in the wind. The progressives are on the march. What will stop them? The military? What, military? You mean the one that’s still arguing about ‘don’t ask; don’t tell’? The military that’s already been issued its own poisoned pill to swallow?
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
Democrats will rue the day, when Republicans regain power in congress, they will push through laws that will decimate the power bases of the Dems. Unions, environmentalists, and others.
Congress gets more and more powerful!
Thaddeus, I used to have a tie like that! Then my Dad got a job!