Belay that!
I lied! Quote from Digby.
Update: I'm wrong about this. If the house passes the bill, it will become the law of the land (unless the president vetoed it, which won't happen.) If reconciliation fails, as remains possible, then the House will just have been screwed and all the careful negotiations of the past few days will have been for naught. Nobody cares about that. (And truthfully, what's the House going to do about it? Secede?)
So if the bill passes tonight it seems everyone can safely commence the celebrations.
And from MSNBC.
The big moment for House Democrats will be the vote to approve the Senate-passed bill, likely to take place after around 7 p.m. EST. If there are 216 “yes” votes or more, the bill will go to the president’s desk to be signed and enacted.
That moment will be as close as Democrats will get to their own version of the NCAA’s “One Shining Moment,” but there will be another tough game in the Senate before a real victory dance can take place. Even if the president signs the overhaul into law, there’s still work to be done in the Senate as that chamber works to approve “fixes” to that law.
On Sunday night, after they vote on the bill, House members will vote on a “reconciliation” package, a series of “fixes” to correct problems in the bill passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve in 2009.
Those fixes must be approved by the Senate before they can take effect. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday pledging that his caucus would vote to approve the corrections, which require 51 votes for approval, but Republicans may be able to derail that process.
Here’s the key rule of reconciliation that Republicans think they may be able to use to derail the fixes package in the Senate. Under the Senate’s “Byrd Rule,” named after its author Sen. Robert Byrd, D- W.V., any senator can raise an objection (called “a point of order”) to any part of the reconciliation bill that does not address budgetary matters. The extraneous matter would be removed from the bill if the parliamentarian upholds that point of order. Sixty votes would be needed to overturn that decision.
So: a win today sends it to Obama. But the Senate will pass the 'fixes' through reconciliation. Which could get ugly, but if Obama signs it, the chances improve exponentially. No wonder tea-baggers are losing their shit. (Not that they don't have a right to protest, they most certainly do. But I think it's wildly inappropriate to threaten gun violence and scream racial slurs and spit on members of congress.)
Update: I'm wrong about this. If the house passes the bill, it will become the law of the land (unless the president vetoed it, which won't happen.) If reconciliation fails, as remains possible, then the House will just have been screwed and all the careful negotiations of the past few days will have been for naught. Nobody cares about that. (And truthfully, what's the House going to do about it? Secede?)
So if the bill passes tonight it seems everyone can safely commence the celebrations.
And from MSNBC.
The big moment for House Democrats will be the vote to approve the Senate-passed bill, likely to take place after around 7 p.m. EST. If there are 216 “yes” votes or more, the bill will go to the president’s desk to be signed and enacted.
That moment will be as close as Democrats will get to their own version of the NCAA’s “One Shining Moment,” but there will be another tough game in the Senate before a real victory dance can take place. Even if the president signs the overhaul into law, there’s still work to be done in the Senate as that chamber works to approve “fixes” to that law.
On Sunday night, after they vote on the bill, House members will vote on a “reconciliation” package, a series of “fixes” to correct problems in the bill passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve in 2009.
Those fixes must be approved by the Senate before they can take effect. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday pledging that his caucus would vote to approve the corrections, which require 51 votes for approval, but Republicans may be able to derail that process.
Here’s the key rule of reconciliation that Republicans think they may be able to use to derail the fixes package in the Senate. Under the Senate’s “Byrd Rule,” named after its author Sen. Robert Byrd, D- W.V., any senator can raise an objection (called “a point of order”) to any part of the reconciliation bill that does not address budgetary matters. The extraneous matter would be removed from the bill if the parliamentarian upholds that point of order. Sixty votes would be needed to overturn that decision.
So: a win today sends it to Obama. But the Senate will pass the 'fixes' through reconciliation. Which could get ugly, but if Obama signs it, the chances improve exponentially. No wonder tea-baggers are losing their shit. (Not that they don't have a right to protest, they most certainly do. But I think it's wildly inappropriate to threaten gun violence and scream racial slurs and spit on members of congress.)