Quote:
Originally Posted by Broadsword2004
The bill is probably going to be voted on today in the Senate Judicary Committee. It will likely pass via a party-line vote, but it is expected to be much tougher to pass in the general Senate. Let us hope it dies there.
One thing I am curious about though, but how come this legislation is starting off in the Senate? I thought legislation starts in the House, which is to address the immediate concerns of the people, and then the Senate is to consider the long-term implications of legislation. So legislation also can be started in the Senate  |
They play all kinds of games with that process. What the senate does is picks another bill that they know they don't want to pass (like Ryan's Budget) and then they "amend" the bill by removing the original text and using their own. Then they pass it back down to the House for a new vote on the "amended" bill. It's shady, but legal since the bill technically started in the House.
There's a really
great example of this mechanism here:
Quote:
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The Senate failed to take up debate on the House bill and instead took up H.R. 3590, a bill regarding housing tax breaks for service members.[166] As the United States Constitution requires all revenue-related bills to originate in the House,[167] the Senate took up this bill since it was first passed by the House as a revenue-related modification to the Internal Revenue Code. The bill was then used as the Senate's vehicle for their health care reform proposal, completely revising the content of the bill.[168] The bill as amended incorporated elements of earlier proposals that had been reported favorably by the Senate Health and Finance committees.
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So the bill that became known as Obamacare originated as a tax break on housing for service members and was rewritten using the method I described. (yes, I quoted Wikipedia, but they have a succinct explanation for the purposes of this discussion)