Cloture on Health Care by Steve Hansen
Well, the Senate has passed the motion to invoke cloture on the Health Care bill.
So what happens now?
The next step is the actual debate on the bill. With cloture in effect, there are some rules that go into effect that are a bit different than the typical debate on a bill. In no particular order, this is what they mean:
Total debate on the bill is capped at 30 hours. By contrast, there was briefly a plan to read the entire text of the bill on the Senate floor, but this was scrapped for many reasons, one of which is that it was calculated that it would take 50 hours of continuous reading to read the bill aloud. Got that? Total debate is capped at 60% of the time that it would take to read the text of this particular bill.
No single Senator is allowed more than one hour to speak about the bill. Think about that for a minute. Before a Senator is allowed to speak at all, they have to be recognized by the chair. It’s conceivable that the chair could allow only supporters of the bill to speak, they could use all of their time, and the 30 hour limit could be used without allowing a single word of opposition to be presented.
No amendments can be presented unless they’ve already been filed. This is probably not a bad thing, in the sense that there’s way too much to discuss in this bill already and it should pass or fail based solely on what it contains, without even more extraneous garbage clouding the debate.
All amendments that have been filed must be relevant to the topic at hand. In theory, this means that we shouldn’t hear about amendments that have nothing to do with health care reform being buried in the bill. In other words, no additional pork should be added. In reality, this is at the discretion of the chair and it’s likely that pork will be added if it’s necessary to secure a vote.
No other legislation can be considered until the Health Care bill either passes or fails. Personally, I can think of nothing better than locking up the Senate from any other action for a long time. If they can’t do anything at all, it makes it harder (but, unfortunately, not impossible) for them to make more of a mess of everything else.
The cloture motion passed with a vote of 60-39, presumably on a mostly party line vote (the exact breakdown is not yet publicly available).
What’s next?
After the Thanksgiving break, the Senate will start their debate on this massive bill and will attempt to bring it to a vote. But between now and then, the Senators will go home for the holiday, and may hold some brief town hall meetings. No matter which side of this bill you’re on, this is when you need to pick up the phone and call your Senator and let him or her know your feelings. Write letters. Email them. Show up at the town hall meetings. Go to their local offices and let them know your opinion. This is not the time to be quiet and hope it all works itself out.
Very informative and very true. Of course, here’s the issue: with a 60 vote for cloture, and the odds being that it is a party-line vote, the odds are also very good that the bill will pass, debate or no. Why? The debate won’t matter, any more than the contents of the bill have mattered. The agenda has been declared, and the needs & desires of the American People are not part of the agenda. I fear the only hope we have of defending our rights & freedoms will come down to finding a way to revoke the law after it is passed. I wish I could be optimistic about that, but, in this regard, my optimism is gone.
You’re probably right about the vote on the actual bill pretty much being guaranteed at this point, however, it’s worth noting that at least three democrats have publicly stated that as the bill stands right now, they will NOT vote for it, even though they did vote for cloture… Of course, that’s not enough to make a difference…