Back to You, Madam Speaker

By Kate Pickert | @katepickert | March 25, 2010 | +

The Senate just passed the House reconciliation bill 56-43. It turns out Senate Democrats didn’t come close to needing Joe Biden to break a tie, with only Sens. Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson and Mark Pryor voting against the bill. Because a small section related to student loans had to be removed, the legislation goes back to the House one more time. The chamber may vote as soon as tonight.

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nibblybits

I will not be sorry to watch Blanche Lincoln lose.
deconstructiva

Kate, did the R’s put up a serious fight / stonewalling / lots of angry speeches, or did they just give up and let this go quietly? Per KT’s last post, is this similar to what the R’s said on the floor in protest with D replies? (I do hope you’ll link your favorite Monty Python / Fawlty Towers clips at her post. Thanks, Kate.)
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znanab

Am I missing something here? I thought there was supposed to be a long, drawn-out fight in the Senate on this bill. Did the Republicans just give up or were we mis-led in the coverage leading up to the vote? This just took a couple of days.
http://phd9.blogspot.com Paul Dirks

Did the Republicans just give up or were we mis-led in the coverage leading up to the vote?

Neither. The whole point of the Republican threats in the Senate was to influence the House vote. Once the House voted yea anyway, there was nothing to be gained by carrying through their threat. IOW, they were lying.
carotexas1

I was really looking forward for Joe to overturn the parliamentarian.
Ivy_B

Actually there were a lot of amendments proposed by the Rs yesterday and late into the evening. Someone posted here about that yesterday. I commented that one of the amendments the very serious Tom Coburn made them vote on was to deny funding of Viagra to sex offenders.

Even the dead-enders must have seen there wasn’t much more to gain and therefore passed it.

I’m much more upset about the good things that were cut out – listed after the jump at an earlier post today by JNS.

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/03/25/al-frumins-bad-day/#more-24094
apr2563

De: How do you embed You Tube videos? I know how to cut and paste the URL link but not the actual video. As you can tell, I am no computer expert.
deconstructiva

Joe can overrule the parlimentarian at any time, yes? (calling KT for help)
deconstructiva

…neither am I. Ironically, I asked stuart earlier how NOT to embed them. It apparently depends on the browser. I use IE and when I copy / paste the links as part of my replies they just embed themselves and pop up. Does firefox behave differently? Anyone know how to embed / not for different browsers?
apr2563

Thanks for the response. So much of my knowlege of the Internet is purely guess work. The first couple of times I posted links to You Tube here, like you, it automatically embedded them. Then it just posted the link.
Ivy_B

decon, not KT, but I can offer some help. The role of a Parliamentarian is to advise the chair on specific rules and the chair may rule differently from that advice. If the body does not agree with the chair they can overturn the ruling of the chair, usually by 2/3 vote. That is general parliamentary procedure, but I don’t think the rules of the Senate are much different in this case.
carotexas1

Thank you Ivy for explaining this so well for deconstructiva.
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deconstructiva I kind of wanted to see the Republicans go out fighting and Joe Biden being the hero blocking them. LOL I think they were too tired out from the long night, and what Paul Dirks said.
deconstructiva

Thanks, Ivy. This helps a lot. And caro, I’m looking forward to lots of Biden’s public smackdowns to the R’s.