Elections Have Consequences, But Not “Consequences” Consequences, You Revanchist Tea Party Short-Bussers!

Posted on | March 1, 2015 | 35 Comments

by Smitty

Just a side note in a Hot Air post,

. . .Republicans in the Senate have been pressing for the interpretation of a rules governing budgetary reconciliation that would allow the upper chamber to pass a full repeal of [ObamaCare] with a simple majority vote rather than with the support of 60 Senators (requiring at least six Democratic defections). Latest week, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that such a maneuver would not be possible.

Interesting. From The Hill link above:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Tea Party groups, including FreedomWorks and the Senate Conservatives Fund, have called on the Republican-led Congress to use reconciliation on ObamaCare.
“We think from what we’ve heard there’s a really credible case to be made that the one-sentence repeal instruction for reconciliation passes all the tests,” said Dan Holler, spokesman for Heritage Action for America.
“From our vantage point, we think there are credible arguments that you can get all of ObamaCare [repealed] through reconciliation and that’s where the focus of lawmakers should be as the budget comes up and as instructions are written,” he added.
But sources say MacDonough, who declined to comment for this article, doesn’t agree.
MacDonough serves as the Senate’s nonpartisan umpire on a variety of arcane procedural moves, and this is one of her biggest calls. She was appointed to her post by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in 2012 and is respected by both sides of the aisle.
McConnell told The Hill in 2012 that it wasn’t necessary to replace MacDonough if Republicans won the majority.
The Kentucky Republican has also refused to commit to using reconciliation on ObamaCare. Last fall, McConnell appeared to downplay expectations on a 51-vote strategy, telling Fox News that it would take 60 votes and a presidential signature to nullify the healthcare law.
“No one thinks we’re going to get that,” McConnell said at the time.

Brother of the World’s Youngest Blogger: “Wut?” pic.twitter.com/17tV6oGXn6

— IGotOverMachoGrande (@smitty_one_each) February 15, 2015

I mean, the whole reason conservatives were supposed to lay by their dish the last time ObamaCare was at the SCOTUS was that ObamaCare, the World’s Most Heinous Non-Tax Tax, was, in fact, taxing enough that Budget Reconciliation could be used to slay it. All that conservatives had to do was provide a black eye to Harry Reid in the form of Republican Control. Then, Senate Majority Leader Bunsen Honeydew and his sidekick Speaker Beaker would put paid to Grendel.

However, somebody suffixed the epic with “fail”. The chances of emancipating Americans from ObamaCare, and doing something useful about reforming health care in our country, now seem about as dim as halting

executive amnesty,
the FCC takeover of the internet,
the resurgence of the Soviet Union, and
next year’s coronation of Her Majesty to carry on the flagrancy of #OccupyResoluteDesk.

I guess the good news is that the leader of the free world is addressing Congress on Tuesday. We need a shot of Churchillian rhetoric to throw back some darkness. Because, and I may not be alone in this, I get the feeling that the GOP elite hold greater allegiance to the Administrative State within the Beltway than they do to the 57 states beyond, so sadly unaware that the Constitution is just a pre-Wilsonian artifact chiefly honored in the breach.

Senate Majority Leader Bunsen Honeydew and Speaker Beaker need to get their junk in one sock, STAT.

Category: Health Care, Republicans

Comments

35 Responses to “Elections Have Consequences, But Not “Consequences” Consequences, You Revanchist Tea Party Short-Bussers!”

bookish1
March 1st, 2015 @ 5:09 pm

Great article!
Art Deco
March 1st, 2015 @ 5:17 pm

There was nothing that required McConnell (with the support of Burr, et al) to return to ‘regular order’. The filibuster could have and should have simply been abolished. McConnell is not committed to anything other than Capitol Hill wheel-spinning.
McGehee
March 1st, 2015 @ 5:40 pm

So, it’s not a tax after all? My whole concept of Obamacare has been shattered. I need to go lie down.
Adobe_Walls
March 1st, 2015 @ 5:40 pm

While some members of congress hold allegiance to our constitution, congress as a whole most certainly does not. Nearly everything the progressives have done in the last century required a constitutional amendment. During that time and longer the federal court’s allegiance to the constitution has been half hearted, half assed and less than half the time.
gastorgrab
March 1st, 2015 @ 5:42 pm

“She was appointed to her post by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in 2012 and is respected by both sides of the aisle.”

—

Replace her.
smitty
March 1st, 2015 @ 5:45 pm

With a button marked “Duh”.
gastorgrab
March 1st, 2015 @ 5:58 pm

“But sources say MacDonough, who declined to comment for this article, doesn’t agree”

—

I would be interested to know MacDonough’s opinion on the initial passage of ObamaCare. It seems that ObamaCare was signed into law on March 23, 2010, but MacDonough has only held her post since February 2, 2012.

Would she have allowed Harry Reid to cheat the system?
Adobe_Walls
March 1st, 2015 @ 6:29 pm

Common sense (an increasingly uncommon virtue) would indicate that a bill passed using reconciliation could be repealed the same way. Asking MacDonough that question would really put her and Reid on the spot. Reason enough to ask. If she stated she believed passing O-care with reconciliation was inappropriate, the case is made for O-care’s illegitimacy. She obviously can’t say it was legitimate. No doubt her response would be to weasel out and not answer.
gastorgrab
March 1st, 2015 @ 6:34 pm

I’d like to pose the very same question to

Alan Frumin, the previous parliamentarian who thought this was OK to do.
John Bradley
March 1st, 2015 @ 7:40 pm

Senate Majority Leader Bunsen Honeydew and Speaker Beaker need to get their junk in one sock

I don’t even want to know what that’s called on Urban Dictionary.
smitty
March 1st, 2015 @ 8:07 pm

Saucy!
JeffWeimer
March 1st, 2015 @ 8:12 pm

So it was good enough to enact it under reconciliation, but not the other way around?
M. Thompson
March 1st, 2015 @ 8:29 pm

Awesome, more like it.
K-Bob
March 1st, 2015 @ 9:42 pm

“Stocking Stuffer”
K-Bob
March 1st, 2015 @ 9:48 pm

I think the dilithium chamber is about near maximum folks.
smitty
March 1st, 2015 @ 10:03 pm

She cannae take anymore, Captain! I cannae be responsible for the safety of the ship!
smitty
March 1st, 2015 @ 10:04 pm

“Shut up,” they explained.
Squid Hunt
March 1st, 2015 @ 10:08 pm

So the rumor is this hugely important person we’ve never focused on before that McConnell allowed to remainin her nonpartisan position (The woman was appointed by Harry “Nonpartisan” Reid, after all.) is potentially rumored to maybe disagree that the law scandously passed in the same manner can’t be repealed through reconciliation. Tell me again how Republicans would repeal Obamacare given the chance. Sorry, guys. Their hands ard tied. Vote Republican!
Daniel Freeman
March 1st, 2015 @ 10:34 pm

I’m a swing voter. One of the greatest opponents of the filibuster is a Democrat that I like, Jeff Merkley, because he’s principled. I’m still impressed that he was able to make any changes to the rules at all as a freshman, but he couldn’t change it enough for that.
DeadMessenger
March 2nd, 2015 @ 1:20 am

I think your words are more prophetic than you know.
DeadMessenger
March 2nd, 2015 @ 1:21 am

The only good news in this article is “baby picture”.
K-Bob
March 2nd, 2015 @ 2:17 am

Time to eject the core.

(We all know who that means.)
Adobe_Walls
March 2nd, 2015 @ 7:26 am

And so it goes.
kbiel
March 2nd, 2015 @ 8:06 am

Calm down you teaba…er…tea partier upstart. You just don’t understand how the sausage is made and that our precious GOP leaders are masters of double jujitsu where they use their opponents strength as their own weakness and their own weakness as an excuse. The long game though is to get the Washington press to love them and then, then they will be able to do whatever they…er…you want, just like the Democrats.
Quartermaster
March 2nd, 2015 @ 8:29 am

You need to accompany that with copious quantities of your favorite adult beverage. But only to help you relax better.
Scoob
March 2nd, 2015 @ 10:04 am

Just another excuse for Republicans not acting. The Parliamentarian won’t let me do it!!

I think that Reid overruled the Parliamentarian when he eliminated the filibuster for lower court judges. As stated elsewhere, why is she still there? I forgot, Republicans!!
AngelaTC
March 2nd, 2015 @ 11:54 am

I am doubting that this whole voting thing will ever fix anything. We need someone who is not afraid to push a small government agenda through like the liberals push their nonsense through. Unfortunately, the tenacity we encounter in our ranks leads to internet sales taxes, auto bailouts and light bulb bans instead allowing us to invest some of “our” SS money in the stock market.
Adobe_Walls
March 2nd, 2015 @ 12:11 pm

What is required is a ruthless, brutal if necessary dedication to the task at hand. Unfortunately undoing what has already been done to us doesn’t appear to be the task an hand for our elected officials.
Daniel Freeman
March 2nd, 2015 @ 1:59 pm

Social Security is insurance against living too long, not a retirement investment. You picked the wrong example. A better one would’ve been how Tesla can’t sell cars at its showrooms in Texas, because the “Republicans” there are happy to arbitrarily restrict capitalism at the bidding of their donors.
trangbang68
March 2nd, 2015 @ 2:35 pm

Anybody that demented chunk of dogcrap, Harry Reid nominated is only respected by like minded grifters, psychopaths and degenerates.
Grandson Of TheGrumpus
March 2nd, 2015 @ 2:58 pm

Why can’t we “deem it repealed”… the obverse side of the “deem it passed” coin?

Before the last election, the House passed many versions of DingleberryCare™ repeal…
If the Senate took each and every one of those passed bills, and one at a time, “deemed it passed”… going through the process of forcing Lord Dingleberry™ to either veto or pocket each individual bill… the repetition might finally impress on the LIV that Progressives don’t care what happens to them but simply want to use them as societal lab mice!

That’s something, (i.e., the repetitious send-up of those “show bills”— as the CommieCrats©— called them…) I’d greatly relish watching!

Unfortunately, that’s just a dream.
Speaker Smeagol has de-fanged the House, and his “butt-buddy”, Claud Cadiddlehopper (?note dated Red Skelton reference) has either abandoned or blunted into uselessness those tools of the Senate’s.

But, remember: That’s why we needed to give the GOProgressives both houses!
It made it ever so easier to keep everyone on the Proggie reservation!
Grandson Of TheGrumpus
March 2nd, 2015 @ 3:04 pm

kbiel:
Well put! And so succinctly, too!
Grandson Of TheGrumpus
March 2nd, 2015 @ 3:37 pm

She is there to provide McKlunker w/cover: “See! My hands are tied b/c The Parliamentarian! Said So!©”
And… yet— there are still people who simply can’t come to terms w/what’s obvious from their actions and the fruits descended therefrom.
The GOProgressive‘s “leadership”’s whole purpose is to cause us to waste our time w/“take back the party” campaigns, until we are well past the point of no return. They’re there as a sort of “lightning rod” to absorb our energies and discharge dangerous (to their efforts) pent-up emotional energy… as they did when there’s been any mass call for repeal, (e.g., freon, low-flow toilets, incandescents, etc…).

As far as the numerous “take back the party” campaigns: we’ve b{n at it since the nineteen-forties. Whenever we get close, such as after Reagan, they change the rules, (campaign finance “reform”) to ensure the hole is plugged until that the momentum is spent. They knew CFR would’nt stick, (it was unconstitutional on its face…), but in the short_term it plugged the hole that allowed a Reagan to rise up and effectively challenge Progressive control, and by time CFR was struck the momentum would’ve been “educated-out” and subsided.

How can you “take back the party” when it can change the field at any time and in any way desired whenever those who, taking advantage of the Regular Joe’s sense-of-fairplay took control but now feel threatened? The intelligent answer is that you can’t.

All you can do is start over.
Squid Hunt
March 3rd, 2015 @ 6:06 pm

I’ve definitely been thinking more and more that Scotty might be the guy.
Sympathy For The Prodigal Chief Justice : The Other McCain
March 5th, 2015 @ 12:59 pm

[…] Can he find some way to legislate creatively again? Did the last election have consequences, but not “consequences” consequences? Has this godforsaken ObamaCare farce not gone on long […]