Short summary of HCR legislative procedure (please contribute input)

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

This is my ongoing combination of DU wisdom as to the procedural realities of the coming HCR bill. (Based on reading posts, soliciting answers to questions and accepting informed refutations of dumb things I've speculated.)

Please correct and amend where necessary.

1) Reid (in consultation w/ WH, Baucus and Dodd) introduces combined senate bill. Senate bill is subject to current senate rules. Infinite debate and infinite amendments unless/until there are 60 votes for cloture to cut off debate and bring the bill to a vote. Assume something passes in the senate.

2) Pelosi puts forward a House bill which should pass easily.

3) House-Senate conference comes up with THE bill.

4) Senate takes up conference bill. Though it cannot be amended it can be debated forever unless/until there are 60 votes for cloture to cut off debate and bring the bill to a vote. This is the same 60 vote threshold as before, so if the conference bill is more liberal than whatever the senate passed we are looking at meeting the same 60 vote threshold with a more liberal bill. (The fact that in a just universe the pugs SHOULD have to put on an old-style Mr. Smith Goes to Washington filibuster doesn't change the fact that under the prevailing rules they do not have to.)

5) House passes bill easily unless it is so odious that House progressives sink it. That is unlikely.

6) Reconciliation, a senate process for expediting budgetary matters without normal cloture requirements, cannot be used to pass a comprehensive HCR bill. It could, in theory, be used for some elements but the bill would be useless if limited to those elements that could be considered under reconciliation.

SUMMARY: Under the rules that will govern HCR legislation any final bill needs 60 votes in the senate. The idea of improving the bill in committee is fine but an improved bill faces many of the same hurdles as the initial senate bill. One can theorize that it is easier to get 60 for the final bill than for the initial Senate bill but that is an unknown. Reconciliation is something to talk about but cannot be used to pass comprehensive HCR.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

1. LOL... I guess "unrecc'ing without offering any input" is the new mode of discourse.

c'est la vie.

[dionysus]

2. i think your analysis is basically correct.