Turn on C-SPAN-- another held-open vote

As they did on the Medicare bill, the Republicans are refusing to gavel closed a House vote in which the count is against them.  The loss would be primarily a symbolic one as I understand it, but it's still worth taking a look at for C-SPAN junkies.

As I understand it, the roll-call vote currently being held open is on instructing the conferees to the conference committee on the budget bill.  I belive the issue is whether the pay-as-you-go rules will be applied to tax cuts as well as spending (along the lines of the Senate proposal), from some debate on the floor that I heard earlier.  The C-SPAN crawl suggests that an instruction to conferees is not strictly binding on them, but it would still be an embarrassing defeat for the Republicans for the conferees to be instructed to agree to the Senate version of the paygo rules.

The chair was just asked when he "expects to close the roll and announce the vote", and responded that he "can't predict the future"...

Now Rangel is pestering the chair to share the basis of his decision...

(Apologies for any incoherence-- I wanted to get this posted fast...)

•  Well, they got three Republicans to flip...

  and vote against the motion to instruct, so it failed on a 209-209 tie after being held open for a little less than half an hour.  (It was originally supposed to be a five-minute vote.)  There were, I believe, 8 Democrats absent; I wonder who they were, and whether it would have been possible for them to make it.  We missed a good opportunity to hand the Republicans a symbolic defeat, or at least force them to hold the vote open for a more ridiculous amount of time.  If all 8 absent Republicans (remember that Janklow's seat is vacant) had showed up and voted no the motion would still have failed on another tie vote, but it would have been nice to get all 8 of them on the record against effective measures to control the deficit...

  by David on Tue Mar 30, 2004 at 02:13:20 PM PDT