Frugal Café Blog Zone

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on December 17, 2009

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), on the Senate floor, requesting that 767-page amendment to Senate health care bill be read aloud

Looks like members of the Senate minority are growing a spine.

When a brand-new 767-page amendment, added to the already burgeoning Senate health care bill (exceeding thousands of pages), is asked to be read aloud to members of the Senate before a vote is called, Democrat Sen. Max Baucus’ and Sen. “Dingy” Harry Reid’s camps are aghast. Read the amendment before senators vote? This amendment was written by Democrats to establish a single-payer health-care system in the US.

The AMENDMENT is 767 pages long… good grief.

Bravo to Sen. Tom Coburn to persist. His request was finally, begrudgingly honored, and the laborious reading of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ monstrosity of a “socialism run amok” amendment began. Sen. Coburn, you rock!

From Michelle Malkin, Single-payer on the Senate floor; Update: Dems end bill reading with questionable tactics:

This is transparency in action.

The Senate’s chief socialist, Bernie Sanders, offered a single-payer health care amendment. It would open Medicare to all regardless of age, income, etc., and would be paid through higher income taxes. The normal procedure on the Senate floor would have been to dispense with the reading of the amendment. But “to alert taxpayers to this latest Washington scheme to take away your health care decisions,” Senator Coburn’s office writes, Sen. Coburn demanded that the full text of the 767 page Sanders amendment be read by the Senate clerk.

It’s being read now.

The clerk just read a droning bureaucratic section on government oversight of hearing aid tests and another on “dietary management” services.

(Fun fact: It took 17 minutes to read the 6 page table of contents.)

From The Skeptical Michigander: Common sense says that Coburn was right to do this:

The world, or at least the blogosphere, is abuzz today about Sen. Tom Coburn’s demand to have Sen. Sanders 760 page amendment read on the Senate floor. According to the normal rules, this should happen for all bills and amendments, but the requirement is routinely waived with unanimous consent. Needless to say, that means one ornery Senator (or two, as DeMint joined him) can force the read, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. This went on for a few hours before Sanders pulled his amendment (ranting the whole way).

Here’s a portion of Sen. Jim DeMint’s Senate press release: DeMint Joins Effort to Make Senators Read the Bill:

December 16, 2009 – WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) announced his support for the procedural effort initiated by U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) to require senators to read the health care bill.

“Democrats are playing a bait and switch trick — wasting our time debating a bill they’ve rejected while writing a new one in secret. Right now, behind closed doors, Democrats are writing a brand new bill, thousands of pages long, and want to rush it through before Christmas.”

“Americans are tired of watching their leaders in Washington pass bills they haven’t even bothered to read,” said Senator DeMint. “If Senator Reid won’t slow down this debate, we will do it for him. This bill allows the federal government to take over our health care system, and it must be stopped. We will use whatever procedural tools are necessary to defeat this bill.”

Earlier today, U.S. Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) admitted that senators will not have time to fully read and understand the Democrat health care takeover bill.

Under Senate rules, the clerk is required to read aloud all bills and amendments offered on the Senate floor. Senators routinely waive this requirement by unanimous consent. Objecting to such requests forces the clerk to read them aloud.

Sen. Tom Coburn Wants Amended Health Care Bill Read, Sen. Baucus Says No Senator Can Understand Health Care Bill

More from The Skeptical Michagander:

Now, despite the fact that this is being referred to as a stalling tactic by just about everyone (and, well, it is), in truth this is simply common sense to us, the measly little common people. So however much that certain Leftists rant and rave about how nutty this move is or how partisan it is or how improper this move is, that’s not going to resonate. If I’m going to vote for something, I want to know what I’m voting on. And if someone just comes up with a 700 page amendment out of the blue, I want to know what’s in it. Now, I’m not going to be naive; we know all 40 Republicans would vote against this no matter what (as would many Democrats). But the way Congress should work is that they would vote based on what’s in the bill. And yes, we know from the gist of it that the Reps would not vote for it based on the bill, but in theory one could try to improve the amendment. But again, that requires actually knowing what’s in it. And if you don’t have time to read it beforehand, then by all means, demand it be read on the floor.

Parliamentary procedures may be arcane and confusing, but they’re based on common-sense principles. And one of the common sense principles is that the Senate should know what they’re voting on.

From Hot Air:

It makes a hash out of Harry Reid’s plan to move the bill through the Senate by Christmas. Twelve hours of floor time for just a single amendment means that no other business can be conducted until at least Friday. Coburn apparently launched this effort in response to an attempt by Reid to shove the bill to a cloture vote without giving everyone enough time to read the bill or peruse the CBO analysis, due this week.

It’s a reminder that even with a supermajority, Reid needs to work with the minority to keep momentum. He can’t pull a Nancy Pelosi jamdown in the upper chamber, and any further attempts will mean weeks of bill reading as the legislation effectively filibusters itself.

Sen. Sanders ultimately had the amendment reading suspended by withdrawing the amendment. This action, however, may have violated Senate parliamentary procedures, as explained by The American Spectator writer Philip Klein:

The Senate Republican leadership believes that the parliamentarian allowed Democrats to violate the rules of the Senate by allowing Sen. Bernie Sanders to cut off the reading of his single-payer proposal.

When an amendment is introduced, it has to be read on the Senate floor unless the rest of the Senate agrees to cut off the reading, and typically, the requirement is waived through “unanimous consent.” Yet today, Sen. Tom Coburn insisted that Sanders’ 767 page bill be read on the Senate floor, which was on pace to take more than 12 hours.

But about three hours into the reading, Sanders withdrew his amendment, and this stopped the reading of the bill — even without unanimous consent.

“In allowing Sanders to do that, it appears the parliamentarian has broken the standing rules of the Senate,” a Republican aide emails. “We’re looking into the implications of this and working on where to go from here.”

Related reading:
Temple of Mut: Senate Switchboards Melting!
Gateway Pundit: Obama Warns That Unless His Nationalized Health Care Bill Is Passed the US Will Go Bankrupt and Change!… 20 States Cut Mammograms After Government Report Released and 61% of Americans Against Democrat’s Nationalized Health Care Bill and 81% Disagree With New Government Rationed Mammogram Rules and Death Panel Update: California Ends Mammogram Subsidies for Poor Women Under 50 and Hundreds Protest Obamacare at St. Louis Million Med March
The Sundries Shack: Coburn Saves America; Dems Cheat Their Faces Off
A Conservative Lesbian: Bitchslap for John Aravosis: Democrats are losing on healthcare reform because their proposals stink — it’s not a leadership thang, you fool
Hot Air: Merry Christmas: Senate ObamaCare vote may come on December 24th
Patterico’s Pontifications: Scheduling the Senate Vote on Health Care and Harry Reid Speaks (Updated) and Obama’s Associates: Dr. Quentin Young
Amused Cynic: More on Obama’s breast cancer death-panel… and Do you want idiots like this examining your breasts? and Obama’s breast cancer death-panel…The lizards are NOT here to help us, people…
Moonbat Patrol: Fourth And Long On ObamaCare, Time To Punt
Nice Deb: ObamaCare On The Brink Precipice… and Video: Krauthammer On DemCare: “It Will Take A Decade To Undo The Damage”
Chicks On The Right: Transparency, My Butt
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Frankenstein’s Monster… ObamaCare’s Hideous, Clumsy Creation: Which Version of ObamaCare Will Be Up for Vote? and Dem Harry Reid’s Latest Lunacy: Opposing ObamaCare the Same As Supporting Slavery… Get That Race Card Out of My Face, Dirty Harry (video) and Howard Dean Blasts ObamaCare on Air America… Wants to Kill the Bill (audio/video) and Congress, Are You All Deaf? Polls Climbing Against ObamaCare and More Botching of Health Care: Democrats Will Increase Tax on Swine Flu Vaccine, Give Preferential Treatment to Gitmo Terrorists & Wall Street Execs for Vaccine (video) and 2,000-Page Nightmare: Newest Version of ObamaCare Is Shocking, “Crown Jewel of Socialism” Will Ravage America (video)
GayPatriot: The Democrats Steal Christmas… & a whole lot more and Harry Reid’s Deputy Doesn’t Know What’s in Reid’s Healthcare Bill

Categories: Business & Economy, Government, Health, Social and Political Climate, Videos, Audio Files
Tags: America, American health care, Americans against ObamaCare, Bernie Sanders, Congress, Democrats, GOP, government-run health care, health care bill, Jim DeMint, Max Baucus, national health care, nationalized health care, Obama's health care plan, ObamaCare, Republicans, Sen. Baucus, Sen. DeMint, Sen. Jim DeMint, Sen. Max Baucus, Sen. Tom Coburn, Senate, Senate health care bill, socialism, socialized health care, socialized medicine, Tom Coburn, universal health care, video, Washington DC, YouTube