Actually, Ezra & Byron, Here’s What Really Happened & Why There Was No Senate-House Conference

While I agree most of the time with Byron York, there is a clarification needed in his article correcting left-wing writer Ezra Klein’s piece today.

This December article by RedState’s Dan Perrin explains:

Now, because of Senator DeMint’s objection, unless the House votes for the Senate bill unchanged – which is highly unlikely (see below) – then the Senate ObamaCare bill must be amended on the House floor to gain the votes they need to pass it on the House floor. And because of Senator DeMint’s objection to the appointment of the conferees, there will be no conference, or conference report.

If the House amends the Senate bill, they then have to send the amended bill back to the Senate – where all the 60 vote margin cloture votes still apply – cloture on the motion to proceed, and cloture to end the filibuster and cloture on any amendment.

That is where all the talk of reconciliation comes into play. Because it will be difficult to pass the Senate bill through the House unchanged, the Senate must promise the House to strip out any offensive language in the bill–as in paying for abortions, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Cornhusker Kickback.

However, the House members who dislike the Senate bill and vote for it must trust the Senate to keep its promise.

That’s a huge question mark, because in order to reconcile a bill, it must first be signed into lawby President Obama. And there are no guarantees that he will sign an amended bill once he gets his wish list met with the Senate bill–which he strongly supports. That’s why this is the big vote; the healthcare bill will have to be signed formally into law by Obama before it can be reconciled.

So, Ezra, you are way off base here. And Byron is caught in the crossfire of Nancy’s manipulating the truth here to make herself look good. I would have loved to have seen the fit she threw when she realized what DeMint did.

Crossposted at RedState

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