Might Obama had this in mind? Joint conference bill can't be fillibustered

[WI_DEM]

When the Senate bill passes on Christmas Eve (presuming it will), it will go to a joint House/Senate conference committee to get issues between the two bills tweaked. We all know that the House Bill is stronger. My guess is that the joint House/Senate conference committee will produce a stronger overall bill than the Senate bill. How strong and including what? I can't say. But it can't, I believe, at this point be fillibustered.

Did anybody think that Obama and Reid might have done what they could just to get the bill out of the Senate so that it could go to conference and be strengthend. Even if Lieberman, Nelson and a few other conservative dems might object to issues in the conference bill, we could still get a stronger bill thru senate with 50 plus Biden votes.

edit] The conference report
Most times, the conference committee produces a conference report melding the work of the House and Senate. A conference report proposes legislative language as an amendment to the bill committed to conference. And the conference report also includes a joint explanatory statement of the conference committee. This explanatory statement provides one of the best sources of legislative history on the bill. (See, e.g., Simpson v. United States, 435 U.S. 6, 17-18 (1978) (Rehnquist, dissenting).)

Once a bill has been passed by a conference committee, it goes directly to the floor of both houses for a vote, and is not open to further amendment. In the first house to consider the conference, a Member may move to recommit the bill to the conference committee. But once the first house has passed the conference report, the conference committee is dissolved, and the second house to act can no longer recommit the bill to conference.

Conference reports are privileged. And in the Senate, a motion to proceed to a conference report is not debatable, although Senators can generally filibuster the conference report itself. The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 limits debate on conference reports on budget resolutions and budget reconciliation bills to 10 hours in the Senate, so Senators cannot filibuster those conference reports.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_conference_committee

[debbierlus]

1. No. He isn't playing some kind of chess

He is selling us out.

If his goal was different you would have seen VASTLY different action WAY before now.

[Laelth]

9. +1

Kill the bill.

Forcing people to buy insurance is no more the answer to a failed health care system than forcing people to buy houses is the solution to homelessness.

:dem:

-Laelth

[ThomWV]

2. That is what I thought too, but I'm told it isn't so.

I am told the Conference Report can be debated in the Senate until Hell freezes over if they can't get a cloture vote.

[no limit]

3. Your post seems to say that it can be fillibustered

From your post:

Conference reports are privileged. And in the Senate, a motion to proceed to a conference report is not debatable, although Senators can generally filibuster the conference report itself.

[gateley]

4. Although I'd love to believe that, I think if they had such a strategy

all along, we'd have heard about it (too many leaks).

[mzmolly]

5. Yes, I do think they wanted to get the bill out of the Senate and

strengthen it later. Dean said as much early on.

[Wardoc]

6. You are confusing conference and reconcilation. After conference, they can filibuster.

[tridim]

7. THAT is political chess.

Deny it all you want, but there it is.

[NJmaverick]

8. We shall see, it very well could play out this way