Q: Did the House just release its reconciliation package? A: Nope.

[Clio the Leo]

Although if you thought they did, you weren't alone.

Did the House just release its reconciliation package?

Nope. The bill on the House Budget Committee's web site that's being called the reconciliation bill is not the reconciliation bill, or at least not what people mean when they talk about the reconciliation bill. It's the bill that will become the reconciliation bill. You see this occasionally in the House and Senate, where the oddities of the rules occasionally make it useful to put a new bill in the hollowed-out shell of an old bill.

TARP, for instance, was passed using Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici's Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008. The Senate health bill was written on the pages of the Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009. And the reconciliation bill will be written on this earlier bill. The original reconciliation instructions require Democrats to use a bill written before 10/15/09, and this bill fits, well, the bill. What'll happen next is that the legislation will head to the Rules Committee, who'll erase what's currently on the page and replace it with the real reconciliation package. It's a bit like how painters will reuse a canvas they've already painted on, though they're doing it to save money and the House and Senate do it because their rulebooks are confusing.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/did_the_house_just_release_its.html

[Skittles]

1. is this circus ever going to end?

[Clio the Leo]

2. Also nope. The US Constitution mandates a Congress. NT

[Skittles]

3. Congress has always sucked but this is spectacular suckage

[Clio the Leo]

5. Well, I suppose you could try armed revolt. NT

[Bolo Boffin]

7. LOL!

[Clio the Leo]

9. and woe to those who ever believed HCR was dead....

.... it was only MOSTLY dead. ;)

Anyone who makes a Princess Bride reference automatically gets put on my list of "favorite DU'ers."

[midnight]

4. So when the canvas is finally finished what will it be? A landscape for the

wealthy insurance corporations, or a landscape of health care accessibility for all americans?

[Bolo Boffin]

6. This bill should be considered an impending palimpsest.

A palimpsest is a manuscript page that was scraped off and used again by medieval priests. The text of this bill is going to be scraped away and the reconciliation bill put into the leftover shell.

Or, if you prefer a sausage-making metaphor, this sausage is going to be emptied and the skin used again. Same difference.

[sandnsea]

8. Thanks for that

I wish Congress would do a better job keeping ahead of the news.

[Jennicut]

10. Okay, why do they have to use a bill written before 10/15/09? It is because

of the reconciliation rules having to do with the current budget? I am so confused. I need some headache remedy. Congressional law is freakin arcane.

[Raine1967]

11. Fasten your seatbelts...

It's going to be a bumpy night!


-- This week it going to like the wild wild west. Thanks for the information, I thought that this was the case when this information became available last night.

[karynnj]

12. And that is what makes finding roll call votes in the Congressional web site, Thomas so hard to do

Looking up ones from long ago, it is often easiest to find the day it passed by googling - and then look for the vote with the result reported in the article.