Celebrating The Exit Of A RINO, Cheering As Rome Burns
By Frank Salvato
May 1, 2009
Page 2 of 3
"A decision not to report a bill amounts to a rejection of the proposal. Both houses provide for procedures under which the committee can be bypassed or overruled, but they are rarely used. If reported by the committee, the bill reaches the floor of the full house." (Emphasis mine)
To summarize, it is the committee process that ensures that the minority party has a voice and influence in a Representative form of government. The committee process is essential in assuring the rights of the minority, something our Framers were quite adamant about.
It should be pointed out here that when the Republicans held control of both houses of Congress in 1995, they always allowed proposed legislation to go through the committee process.
With the election of Barack Obama to the presidency and an almost super-majority of Democrats to the House of Representatives, Pelosi completely abandoned her pledge to inclusion, ethics and transparency. She immediately declared an "emergency" and suspended the committee process, yet again, this time to pass the so-called stimulus bill, a bill that included tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in special interest earmarks. Additionally, Pelosi intends to use the reconciliation process to advance the mammoth national health care initiative championed by Obama, Reid, herself and the rest of the borrow-and-spend junkies in the Democrat Party.
George Will, writing in the Sacramento Bee explains the reconciliation process: (web site)
"Under reconciliation, debate on a bill can be limited to 20 hours, enabling passage by a simple majority (51 senators, or 50 with the vice president breaking a tie) rather than requiring 60 votes to terminate debate and vote on final passage. The president and Senate Democrats have decided to use reconciliation by Oct. 15, unless Republicans negotiate compliantly regarding health care. But the threat mocks negotiations. The reconciliation process was created in 1974 to facilitate adjustments of existing spending programs."
And former Sen. John Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says of Pelosi's use of reconciliation:
"[T]his decision is a deeply troublesome attempt to circumvent the normal and customary workings of American democracy...It's a radical departure from congressional precedent, in which budget rules have been designed and used to reduce deficits, not expand the size of government. And it promises bitter divisiveness under an administration that has made repeated promises to reach across the partisan divide."
Examining Pelosi's statement about the defection of the traitor Specter, in which she says, "...now we can get things done without explaining process..." we can understand her intentions. Not only has Pelosi completely abandoned her pledge to ethics, transparency and non-partisanship, she is blatantly lying to the American people about the mechanics of the process. "Now we can get things done without explaining process" can only mean that transparency is dead in the 111th Congress and a Pelosi oligarchy has replaced our constitutionally mandated representative form of government.
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