House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer: 'We're Going to Have a Clean Up or Down Vote'

[sabra]

Source: ABC News

Hoyer, Eric Cantor Spar Over Health Care Vote Count, Parliamentary Tactics

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer today hinted that Democrats may use a controversial parliamentary procedure to pass the health care bill, a tactic that House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor charged would be an attempt to fool the public.

"We're going to have a clean up or down vote on the Senate bill, that will be on the rule," Hoyer, D-Md., said on "Good Morning America" today. "This is not an unusual procedure. We're going to vote on a rule."

The controversial procedure would allow House members to vote on health care changes without ever voting directly on the Senate bill. In this case, the House would vote on a "fix it" measure that would make changes to the Senate health care bill and then automatically, in the process, pass the bill without actually having to vote on it.

The procedure has been used 20 times over the last 30 years by both Democrats and Republicans, often on technical or unpopular measures like raising the debt limit, but never on one as big as health care reform.

"Unfortunately, the Republicans are a little bit like the boy who killed his two parents and then wants sympathy because they're an orphan. They've tried to stop the passage of this bill, slowed it up," Hoyer said. "We'll vote for the Senate bill in the rule, and then we will amend the Senate bill in the process."

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/HealthCare/health-care-steny-hoyer-eric-cantor-spar-vote/story?id=10122227

[Botany]

1. aka "they" know they have the votes for it to pass

[xultar]

3. i wanna get a look @ boners hanky to see if the ompa loompa comes off

[No Elephants]

5. It was never a matter of not having the votes. It was about a Rep not having his or her name

associated with the vote.

A Rep could say, "Hey, don't look at me. I voted for a public option bill. I never voted for a bill without a public option, or for the Cornhusker Amendment or for the Lousiana Purchase.

Maybe that's what's called plausible deniability?

You need the same number of votes, whether you vote for the Senate bill or you vote for the fixes, together with "deeming" the Senate bill passed.

[tomm2thumbs]

2. 'Republicans are a little bit like the boy who killed his two parents....' had to laugh on that one

thanks for posting!

[No Elephants]

4. Is he saying they'll vote on deeming?

I am still waiting for someone to tell me the difference between "a vote" and "an up or down vote."

Must we adopt Dummya's language, too?

[kirby]

7. Yes...

Notice he was careful to say there will be an up or down vote on 'a rule'. The rule is the deem and pass thing, not the actual Senate bill.

[mzmolly]

6. "the Republicans are a little bit like the boy who killed his two parents and then wants sympathy

...because they're an orphan"

So true! Go Dems!

[gratuitous]

8. See, that "up or down vote" thingie really works!

And this whole process might have been conducted in substantially less time if the Democratic leadership had been saying it back in, say, August or so. Then all the Republican carping about "the American people" could have been shit-canned as the elected representatives carried out the will of the people who elected them.

[harun]

9. Do all parties involved have someone else to blame now?

[BadgerKid]

10. No vote avoids accountability

to the electorate that is uncertainly represented in the first place.

[high density]

11. I've never seen a media so fixated on parliamentary procedure before

I guess they've decided they can't fool any more people on the bill itself, now it's time to just confuse them about how it's going to become law.

Six months from now nobody is going to remember how it became law, just if it passed or not.