Reid: Senate Dems Will Defeat Boehner Plan Tonight

[jefferson_dem]

Reid: Senate Dems Will Defeat Boehner Plan Tonight
Brian Beutler | July 28, 2011, 1:00PM

If the House of Representatives passes Speaker John Boehner's debt limit bill on Thursday night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he'll take up the legislation right away and, using procedural tools at his disposal, defeat it immediately.

"Today the House of Representatives will vote on Speaker Boehner's short-term plan to raise the debt ceiling," Reid said on the Senate floor. "As soon as the House completes its vote tonight, the Senate will move to take up that bill. It will be defeated. No Democrat will vote for a short-term Band-Aid that would put our economy at risk and put the nation back in this untenable situation a few short months from now."

Often scheduling a vote in the Senate requires more than a two day wait. But to expedite the process, and to prove as swiftly as possible that Boehner's plan is DOA in the Senate, Reid will move to table the bill. All Democrats will vote to table the legislation, Reid has said, and then it's on to the next step.


In Senatese, from a leadership source: "As soon as the Senate receives the House Message (Boehner bill), a motion to concur with the House Message is made. The Leader moves to table the motion to concur (majority vote threshold). The Boehner plan is defeated in the Senate."

In this scenario, a "yes" vote is actually a vote to defeat the Boehner bill.

<SNIP>

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/reid-senate-dems-will-defeat-boehner-plan-tonight.php

[Imajika]

1. Why has Reid not passed his plan through the Senate?

It would help if we passed something. The House is going to be able to claim they passed 2 bills, the Senate has nothing.

So why doesn't the President just back the Reid plan and get it passed in the Senate?

[Lochloosa]

5. Here is why....

The federal budget process is similar to the regular legislative process, but it is also different in some very important ways. First, because the Constitution requires that any bill raising revenue must originate in the House of Representatives, the House has traditionally taken the lead in the budget process.

http://thisnation.com/budget.html

[karynnj]

7. My guess -

is there are two reasons.

1 - it won't pass if he does it now - the Republicans will filibuster.

2 is that they want to defeat the budget bill, but keep it "alive". They then have an amendment to replace it in its entirety with the Reid bill. This works only if there are at least 7 Republicans who refuse to filibuster Reid's bill. If that works (tell me you believe 7 Republicans actually do this), then that bill passes the Senate. There is then either a conference to work out a bill acceptable to both houses (when there really isn't one that really is ok for even one House) or the House passes the Senate bill with mostly Democrats.

That leads to the bizarre result that Democrats are blamed for the cuts the Republicans forced.

[bigwillq]

2. And then what?

:shrug:

[jefferson_dem]

3. Who knows?

:shrug:

My guess is that the Senate debates and tries to pass an alternative ... while fighting Republican roadblocks. In the end, we may some sort of compromise bill between the House and Senate versions (or Senate principles if they aren't able to pass anything). Whatever they do, there are only a few grains of sand left in the hourglass. The other option will be an extension or a clean bill delivered late Sunday ... in a last ditch effort to avoid calamity.

[bigwillq]

4. Either way

It seems like the average American is pretty much screwed.

[Avalux]

6. No plan will be passed. The debt ceiling will be raised, as it always has been.

The fight over the budget will live to see more days, months and battles.