Month: March 2015

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“From our vantage point, we think there are credible arguments that you can get all of ObamaCare [repealed] through reconciliation and that’s where the focus of lawmakers should be as the budget comes up and as instructions are written,” he added.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.