Deem and Pass?

I've heard about enough Congressional methods of passing legislation lately to make my head spin. Almost none of it is understandable to any but the most enthusiastic political process buff.

The filibuster I barely get. In the past it was that members of the opposing party had to go to the podium and physically stall the process. They had to at least make the effort. Now it has become an un-written rule that all you have to do is say that you will filibuster and that is enough. Seems kind of lazy doesn't it? As another example of how weak the Democrats are there is no reason why they haven't been forcing the Republicans to physically do this every time they try to obstruct legislation. Let the public see how ugly the process is. The Democrats whine about how awful it is that the minority party forces them to muster up 60 votes for every little thing but they do nothing substantive about it. But that is a dead horse and, therefore, I shall not beat it.

Reconciliation I don't get at all, save for that it is now being identified as pure evil by Republicans despite their own frequent use of it when they were in power. All I know is that it is how the majority party gets by the super majority requirement and gets legislation to only need a simple majority.

As for this latest bit of business, the so called "Deem and Pass", well that makes no sense at all. I've tried reading up on it in a couple places and it is still beyond all understanding. The gist of it seems to be that you take a piece of legislation, draw up some amendments, and pass the amendments which in turn passes the bill. The fuss being raised in this instance (health care reform) seems to be that this would cause the amendments to be passed without the bill actually being complete. I could be completely off base.

Most of the objection I am hearing is that HCR would be passed without a vote. That is confusing because I see that there will be a vote on Sunday. Politics is so full of misinformation that I don't know who to believe.

Take the cost of this reform, for instance. The CBO recently announced that this bill will save money ($1.6 trillion) over a ten year period. That should be good news, right? Well all the conservative talking heads are now just talking about the cost and ignoring the savings. If they do acknowledge the CBOs report they are saying that you of course can't trust what the CBO says. The CBO has something in common with polls in that the numbers will be ignored by people when they don't serve their purposes. When Republicans hear how expensive a Democrat program is from a CBO report then they will wave that baby in the air for all to see. When the CBO reports that a Democrat program will save money then you can't trust the CBO. I'm sure that this goes both ways.

Anyway, my issue is with how this bill gets passed. I have read that the reason the Democrats are using(?) Deem and Pass is because some Congress men and women dont want to go on record as having voted for the bill. If that is true then those people need to be booted from office. That shows more concern for their political image than their actual job. If they don't believe in the bill, then they should vote no. If they do, then vote yes. It's that simple.

This HCR issue has been dragged on long enough and it needs to be over and done with. It should have been settled long ago. It's time they finish writing this baby up and bring it to a vote. Enough of this pussyfooting around. They all owe the people that much. As much as the Republicans love to declare that "the people have spoken", it was in the vote of 2008 where the people spoke. Its about time that the Democrats remember why they were voted in and do their damn job.