Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) fired the first shot in the GOP’s procedural guerrilla war campaign against Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) health care bill Wednesday, forcing the Senate clerk to read a more than 700-page amendment to the bill, a process that could take hours.Coburn had previously threatened to make the Senate sit through the entire 2,000 page bill, something that was estimated to take 34 hours. He later backed down when it appeared his own party wouldn't support him.
I'm glad to see him doing this. Harry Reid desperately wants this bill done before Christmas, and given certain time requirements in Senate procedures, he can't afford a delay like this. Look for Democrats to make repeated calls for unanimous consent to waive the reading of his amendment. As long as at least one GOP member objects, they can't stop it.
UPDATE: From Michelle Malkin:
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.)
Big Nanny dreams and schemes laid bare.
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2 comments:
So this ONE amendment is more than 1/3 the size of the bill itself. This is deviousness on top of deviousness. 2K pages allow for more than enough opportunities for graft, earmarks, and fiddling with the books.
This bill in its entirity is absurd. I would think if a person left out all of the crap that it contains they could easily have a bill with less than 200 pages at the most, and it could cover all of the necessary parts of the health care plan in plain English.
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