Chumped Again
ooops. Looks like there’s gonna be a vote on defunding Planned Parenthood after all…
Consider that the deal that cleared the way for keeping the government open actually does guarantee a Senate floor vote on defunding language. If the House passes the fully-year continuing appropriations bill agreed to under the deal—that is, one that does not contain the defunding language in the text— it lives within the bounds of the agreement. And if the House should then pass H. Con. Res. 36, as prior votes on bills containing such defunding language suggest it might, it would do so without violating the agreement with the White House. That is, they will have passed an appropriations bill that was free of the defunding language as agreed, but then also have passed a separate measure instructing the Clerk to reinsert that language after the fact.
At that point, Senate Republicans will be ready to collect on their payoff in this deal: a free, guaranteed, up-or-down vote on defunding language. And if they choose to hold that vote on H. Con. Res. 36, and they should manage to find a majority for it, then the full-year continuing appropriations bill goes to President Obama’s desk with the defunding language in it despite the deal, and the choice will then be between a veto and a shutdown, or… another “compromise.”
Remember, the terms of the deal guarantee a vote in the Senate. A filibuster breaks the deal. That’s not to say it wouldn’t be done. But it breaks the deal.
Shoulda voted for Clinton. Having been the right’s punching bag, she’d probably be a little smarter when dealing with these snakes. But not our boy, President I-wanna-be-Reagan.
April 14th, 2011 at 10:23 pm
Looks like KagroX was wrong:
“They also voted today on whether to defund Planned Parenthood. A few days ago, two thirds of us thought fewer than 56 Senators would defend the funding. It turns out we were too pessimistic: Brown, Collins, Kirk, Murkoswki, and Snowe all voted against defunding, along with every member of the Democratic caucus, for a total of 58 votes.
“One note: contrary to many media reports concerning the budget deal, these were not up and down votes, but rather cloture votes, and thus needed 60 Senators for the Republicans to prevail. So it’s possible Planned Parenthood could have garnered even more GOP defectors had it actually been up for a vote–as it stands, a Senator could argue that they voted for cloture in order to have an up or down vote, and that they might have voted against defunding later. Quite possibly the result would have been the same, but we’ll never know. Personally, I would have preferred up or down votes, so as not to give those Republicans that excuse.”
I agree with her. Who got chumped again?
April 15th, 2011 at 9:23 am
looks like a lot of people got chumped, since the media got it wrong.
waldman’s usually on target, which i why i went with his link.