Single Payer Amendment Pulled By Sanders – Guess He Couldn’t Stand to Hear It Read Aloud
(December 15, 2009 - Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images North America)
Vermont superliberal Senator Bernie Sanders reluctantly withdrew his amendment to the Senate’s healthcare bill that called for the implementation of a full-blown single payer system after Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) demanded the amendment be read on the floor of the Senate – derailing all progress on the matter for the day. The “amendment” was a whopping 767 pages long and would have taken at least 12 hours to finish reading aloud so the move by Coburn was actually quite brilliant considering the time restrictions Dems have placed on themselves. The amendment had no chance of passing and seeing the hours tick away between now and the Christmas break, Sanders decided it was prudent to withdraw the proposal ignoring the fact that he was an idiot for ever even wasting the time to introduce it. He called the procedural move by Coburn an “outrage” and actually thought he won the day after three hours of the bill (139 pages) had been read. Air America clearly thought he won the day as well … Bernie Sanders Bests Tom Coburn, Withdraws Public Option Bill. Man libs make me laugh sometimes.
Objection to the amendment being accepted as read – almost 800 pages is why there is objection – come on get a clue.
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Coburn is a rockstar. He destroyed the Democrats today and they had to break every rule in the Senate to try to save the day. Big day for Republicans. I wonder at what point they will realize that all these rules changes and procedural missteps will come back to haunt them once their reduced to the minority party?
I hadn’t seen the video of the debate until a short while ago, but it was pretty entertaining. When I saw it come across the wire, I envisioned a much less confrontational scenario – especially considering most on the Left began claiming it as a victory. I think both parties could stand to learn a great deal from their current positions of relative power. When the roles are reversed next November, it will be interesting to see if the current trends continue.
I’m pretty sure the Democrats violated the rules of the Senate by stopping the reading and allowing him to withdraw. I thought once it was in motion, it had to be completed. It appears our lawmakers could care less about the law and rules when it comes to jamming something down our throats so they can grab perpetual power. I’ve never seen anything like this… in this country anyway. They know their constituents and a majority of people don’t want the bill and they could care less and are actually figuratively slapping us all in the face while they’re doing it. I’ve never seen such contempt of taxpaying citizens. They’re purposely taxing, raising prices, fining us, suppressing more and more liberties of regular taxpayers, and it has become almost a “feeding frenzy” with them. They’re threatening wives of senators, playing games with our soldiers and Nation’s national security and threatening to close bases, treating senators like whores by giving them money taken from us, and doing everything in their power to make sure we’re all fatally injured by them. We’re nothing but bait that can be used and disposed of to them.
That they did – as Senator McConnell pointed out on the floor today, but unfortunately the reality that exists is that the rules of Congress are only as good as those who write them these days. Perhaps Republicans could have put up more of a fight – and they may still in the days to come – but at the end of the day, I do believe that Coburn certainly got his point across today that bills and amendments introduced for approval sight unseen will not be tolerated – at least on matters as crucial as this one. We all know that as soon as health care is off the table they will all go right back to not reading these bills again, but for now at least Dems know what they can expect when they pull these stunts.
Last week Rush Limbaugh was highly critical of McConnell for not using every procedural tactic at his disposal and at the time I was on the fence and may even have sided with McConnell in taking the higher ground in choosing not to resort to such tactics, but the truth of the matter is that the American people are blind to the legislative process and genuinely only care what the end result is after Congress does its thing. My only hope is that the end result of this debate is not a reality that sees our federal government pulling the strings on 1/6 of our nation’s economy.
As to their blatant disregard for what the American people want… we can only hope that however this bill eventually plays out in the Senate – and then in conference committee – that the American people pay close attention to who votes for it and they make them answer for that vote next November.
Motion sickness is devasting when on vacation. Thanks for the informative blog post!