To Pass Health Care Reform, Democrats Violate Senate Rules (Video Included)

The depths to which Senate Democrats will descend to ram through the health care reform bill were laid bare yesterday when the Senate Parliamentarian decided to waive Senate rules during a reading of an 767 page amendment.

The drama started when Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent socialist from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats, offered the amendment to the health care reform bill to reinsert the public option that had been taken off the table to appease the Senate's other independent, Senator Joe Lieberman.

Generally when a bill or an amendment is introduced for the first reading by the Clerk of the Senate, the bill is "considered as read" by unanimous consent after a few paragraphs. This way the business of the Senate, glacial at times, can be sped along just a little.

This time, however, Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma and a doctor, did not consent. Therefore, according to Senate rules, the entire 767 page amendment would have to be read on the Senate floor.

Senator Coburn was making two points. First the Republican caucus would make the Democrats suffer for the zeal to ram through health care reform by slowing the process down by any means necessary. Second far too many bills and amendments have passed through both houses of Congress without having been read by most of the people voting for them, not to mention the American people who will be obliged to live under such legislation.

If the Clerk of the Senate has read the amendment, it would have taken many hours. Those would have been hours of mind numbing legislative language, broadcast via C-Span to the entire country.

Three hours into the reading Senator Bernie Sanders rushed to the floor to withdraw his amendment and stop the reading. The problem is that under Senate rules, the reading of a bill or amendment cannot be stopped without the unanimous consent of every Senator.

As quoted in the American Spectator, under Riddick's Senate Rules, pages 43-44:

Reading: Under Rule XV, paragraph 1, and Senate precedents, an amendment shall be read by the Clerk before it is up for consideration or before the same shall be debated unless a request to waive the reading is granted; in practice that includes an ordinary amendment or an amendment in the nature of a substitute, the reading of which may not be dispensed with except by unanimous consent, and if the request is denied the amendment must be read and further interruptions are not in order; interruptions of the reading of an amendment that has been proposed are not in order, even for the purpose of proposing a substitute amendment to a committee amendment which is being read. When an amendment is offered the regular order is its reading, and unanimous consent is required to call off the reading."

And yet the Senate Parliamentarian decided, arbitrarily, to waive the rules and allow Senator Sanders to withdraw the amendment and stop the reading. The Senate Republicans are weighing options.

The episode proves that the Senate Democrats will even violate the rules of the Senate in their zeal to ram through health care reform before Christmas. However, Senator Tom Coburn is unimpressed. Joined by Senator Jim DeMint, Coburn has announced that if the health care reform bill reaches the floor of the Senate, he will insist that the entire text be read as well. By last count, the Senate version of health care reform is in excess of 2000 pages,

Source:GOP: Dems Violated Senate Rules By Cutting off Reading of Sanders Amendment, Philip Klein, American Spectator, December 16th, 2009