Lyin' Ted wants to blow up Senate rules to pass a more radical Healthcare bill

[Shadows]

Source - Politico

House Republican leaders narrowly tailored their Obamacare repeal bill to avoid violating Senate rules, but conservatives are pushing back with advice of their own: tear up the rulebook.

A growing number of conservative lawmakers on Thursday urged GOP leaders to push the limits of how much of the health law they can reshape under a powerful procedural maneuver known as budget reconciliation — and to overrule the Senate parliamentarian if she doesn't decide in their favor.

Such a gambit would require the unlikely buy-in of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a noted institutionalist who earlier this year avoided talk of changing his chamber's rules to kill the ability to filibuster Supreme Court nominees.

"There are limits to what we can do" on Obamacare while complying with the Senate rules, Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Senate Republican, said in a Thursday floor speech. Under reconciliation guidelines, bills can be passed in the Senate with a simple majority and cannot be filibustered, as long as their provisions have a direct impact on spending or tax levels.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Thursday kept up his pitch for a strategy that would see Vice President Mike Pence overruling the Senate parliamentarian, if necessary.

“I have been encouraging leaders in both houses that we should not approach this with both hands tied behind our back," Cruz told reporters. According to the 1974 law that set up reconciliation, he insisted, "it is the presiding officer — the vice president of the United States — who rules what’s permissible under reconciliation and what is not.”

So, the Dems are real pu**ies? The VP can rule what comes under reconciliation? You get your VP to do anything you want & the filibuster is essentially dead that way !

[Hindsight was 2020]

The more things change the more they stay the same Trump an the GOP are going to give away their majorities in 2018 by pushing too far to the right

[mvd10]

I don't support the Freedom Caucus on healthcare, but effectively killing the fillibuster would be a good thing imo.

[Pericles]

I don't like how he'd use it but removing the filibuster would be a good thing.

[Virginiá]

I'm not entirely sure the filibuster should be completely gutted, but rather weakened so the minority party can't completely and indefinitely block anything it wants not currently covered by reconciliation rules. If the minority party wants to block something, perhaps their members should stand up and take turns talking for as long as it takes. Or perhaps lowering cloture to 55 Senators.

Either way, I can see proper arguments against and for the filibuster but I also can say for sure that, were it gutted while the GOP has unified control, liberals/Democrats (myself included) would be having daily heart attacks with the torrent of conservative policy that would inevitably follow.

[Skill and Chance]

I don't support the Freedom Caucus on healthcare, but effectively killing the fillibuster would be a good thing imo.

If the filibuster is completely gone, we are <10 years away from each incoming trifecta packing SCOTUS and all of the federal circuits until their "side" has a clear majority.  Do you want explicitly political courts?  Because that is where this road ends.

[Cashew]

I don't support the Freedom Caucus on healthcare, but effectively killing the fillibuster would be a good thing imo.

If the filibuster is completely gone, we are <10 years away from each incoming trifecta packing SCOTUS and all of the federal circuits until their "side" has a clear majority.  Do you want explicitly political courts?  Because that is where this road ends.

No its not. You seem to have reversed cause and effect when in fact it is the polarization that causes a weakening of senate traditions, not the other way around.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Bring it on! The filibuster needs to go.