If the House tries to defund the Health Care bill and Planned Parenthood

[PlanetBev]

Can Obama veto it? Or can the Democrats block these kinds of moves?

[T Wolf]

1. "Would they try to block it" is the more important question? In the current environment, there is

nothing that is out-of-bounds as far as compromise/capitulation principles are concerned.

If the administration can talk about extending the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, anything is "on the table" except looking backward at criminal activity.

But, they may be too busy with fighting off the rethug investigations to do any more harm to their "causes" with further sell-outs.

See, there's always a silver lining.

[R. P. McMurphy]

2. If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one around to hear it . . .

Do a majority of Democrats necessary to accomplish anything still have no spine?

Yes, the President can veto and the Democrats in the Senate also have the ability to block legislation. The question is will they?

[sweetapogee]

3. good question

There really isn't anything to veto. The house enters a spending bill, it goes to the senate, back to the house, back to the senate then to the President. All this time it is modified through committee and reconciled. If the President doesn't like the bill, he veto's it. If there is enough support in the congress, the veto can be overridden. But I can't imagine that congress would do that on a spending bill.

Specifically, if the house wanted to de fund PP, they would just leave it out of any bill. The senate could insert it in or the bill would simply go through without any comment on the subject. Mean time, groups with an interest would be making their pleasure/displeasure known and congress would act as it deems fit.

[totodeinhere]

4. If the repeal is in a bill he can veto it. But if they simply refuse to pass

a spending bill then there is nothing Obama can do. The GOP will probably try the later strategy.

[Occam Bandage]

5. The Republicans have no direct ability to pass anything.

They can get anything past the House, but nothing past the Senate, and certainly nothing past Obama's veto. The problem, though, is that they can play chicken with us. They can simply refuse to pass a budget unless we give in and give them what they want. A deadlock would result in a massive burst of unpopularity for everyone involved; they'll probably be betting that we'll be afraid of taking the blame and blink first.

[sweetapogee]

6. the house speaker sets the agenda

A possible scenario for the pukes would be to bring up emergency supplemental spending bills to fund the government short term. Avoids the shut down and would be a constant reminder to the country that the dems didn't pass a budget resolution while at the same time keeping the budget debate on the 6:00PM news for as many months as it takes. For this reason, I think the current congress will at least try to pass a budget resolution before the holidays but it will favor the pubs as they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. This is not 1996.

[tritsofme]

7. This is what government shutdowns are made of.

Republicans attach poison pill language to must-pass spending bills. So the president has to decide if one provision is worth a veto of a multi-billion dollar spending bill. If he does veto and Republicans lack the votes to overrride, then the standoff becomes either Congress passing a new bill that is acceptable to the president, or the prospect of a partial government shutdown.

[harun]

8. Wouldn't ever get to the President because it would die in the Senate.