GOP continues to find new lows of behavior
At approximately noon today, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) took to the Senate floor to introduce his single-payer amendment. The amendment is 767 pages long. In an attempt to delay and disrupt the Senate debate, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) demanded that the Senate clerks read the entire bill.
Sanders demanded at least twice that the reading of his bill be dispensed with so that the Senate could proceed to a vote. But Coburn objected both times:
SANDERS: I would ask that the amendment be considered as read. …
PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE: Is there objection?
COBURN: There is objection.
SANDERS: …and may I ask me friend from Oklahoma why he is objecting?
COBURN: Regular order, Mr. President.
PRESIDENT: Regular order is the reading of the amendment.
Watch a compilation of the events:
The Wonk Room estimated that, at the pace it was proceeding, the reading of the bill would take 14.5 hours. On his twitter feed, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) explained the Republican strategy:
The move by Republicans pushed back scheduled votes on other time-sensitive bills,including funding for the military. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said, “This is a strategy by the Republican leadership which not only endangers the passage of health care reform, it endangers the enactment of the Department of Defense appropriations bill.”
After two and a half hours of obstruction, Sanders relented and withdrew his amendment. Noting the serious crises that confront the nation, Sanders delivered an impassioned address, stating, “The best the Republicans can do is try to bring the United States government to a halt by forcing a reading of a 700 page amendment! That is an outrage! … It is wrong to bring the United States government to a halt.”
Why the hell should 767 pages of CRAP be considered as read?
Conservative09
16 December 2009 at 3:19 pm
Crap? You’ve read it?
And it’s not just Sanders amendment—they are determined to obstruct beyond all reason (as noted in the post above).
LeisureGuy
16 December 2009 at 3:58 pm
Sounds like offering a 767 page amendment not expected to pass is wasting time too.
But remember, only the GOP can waste time.
Conservative09
16 December 2009 at 4:00 pm
No, there are quite a few Democrats who are wasteful of time: Ben Nelson and Max Baucus leap to mind. I don’t believe I’ve been short of criticisms of Democrats in general, including Obama, when I believe they’re in the wrong. But the GOP today is incredible—not only wasting time, but routinely lying like a rug.
If the amendment had not been read aloud, it would have been voted on (assuming there were 60 votes to break the inevitable GOP filibuster: they filibuster just about every bill these days), probably defeated, and things would proceed. That’s the idea the GOP used to love: an up-or-down vote. The benefit is that we would get a good idea of which Senators support single-payer and which do not.
LeisureGuy
16 December 2009 at 4:12 pm