Question about bills in Congress

[ohio_liberal]

I don't know the answer to this question and I'm hoping someone here will. In S1932 there is language to cut child support funding by some 5 billion dollars, along with other horrific cuts to Medicaid and Medicare. I received an email last night from a child support advocacy group (it's all custodial parents involved) and they would like people to call their congresspeople and request that that part of the bill be removed.

So my question is--

Can the text actually be removed at this late date or must the congresscritters just vote no on the entire bill? The Senate began debating the bill yesterday.

[KharmaTrain]

1. Depends On How The Bill Is Written

Right now, anything that goes through the House is sure to be tampered with in committee and write-up. Democrats rarely have any input into writing the final legislation and are totally locked out of the revision process that many bills undergo to tweek the right Repugnican perks.

Is this a part of the bill, or is this an ammendment. Or is this cut written into another bill? For example...this cut could be attached to a defense appropriation bill that puts a representative in a tough spot of voting down the bill and risk being labeled as "not supporting the troops" (this is how the IWR was played).

If this is an ammendment, it can be defeated or the Democrats can try to introduce a counter ammendment to negate the cuts or alter the bill's language, but, again, in DeLay's Congress, forgedaboudit.

Hopefully that group will get outraged at the backroom tactics the Repugnicans use so they can help expose the corruption that is hurting your group and get involved in helping elect Democrats next year.