Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale a tale of a fateful night,
that started at Big Pharma's house,
and ended with an awful sight.
The Speaker was a jolly lobbier,
the President's voice was clear,
Medicare set sail that day,
for a slow and painful death.
A slow and painful death.
The House of Representatives approved the god-awful Medicare bill last night 220-215.
After a
shameless endorsement by the AARP (L.A. Times. reg. required) of a piece of legislation that harms more seniors than hurts them, House Republican leadership decided that the old rules of 15 minutes for a vote weren't good enough. This isn't surprising, since the vote stuck at 218-216 against for over an hour before enough votes were changed or found to end up passing the bill.
Let me make this absolutely clear. I worked in the U.S. Senate as a page. One of my most important duties was tracking down Senators for votes. It was made absolutely clear to me at that time that nothing, and I mean nothing, was worse than a Senator of your party missing a vote. They have subways running between the Senate and the Senate office buildings just for this purpose (well, not subways really, but little train cars on tracks). Bells ring throughout the Capitol when there are votes. I had to interrupt Senators at dinner and in the bathroom to make sure they were aware there were votes going on (and they usually were).
Extending a vote for three hours because you were on the losing side of it is unprecedented. The Congressional Record for yesterday's debacle isn't ready yet, but you can find it at
Thomas probably tomorrow.
Fortunately, some Senators are threatening to filibuster, which was always a possibility, but even more so now that the House leadership has played hard and fast with the rules to make sure things went there way.
[T]he extraordinary House vote, which GOP leaders held open for nearly three hours while they pursued Republican holdouts, brought the promise of a filibuster from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. "Give this bill a fair vote in the House and I'll drop my filibuster in the Senate," Kennedy said in a statement. "I did not want to vote for this bill," said Rep. Butch Otter, R-Idaho. But he did, as did a handful of late GOP converts.Who knows why these late converts did vote for the bill and how hard they were muscled by leadership and by the Bush administration, but this is just ridiculous. I'm still in shock.