Procedural shinannigans with bailout bill - HR 3997

[Ack]

I don't usually read Kos, but this is the best summary I've found about what's going on with HR 3997. (from http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/29/6587/57299/215/614055 )

Anyway, if you're scratching your head about how the bailout legislation, which was conceived over the weekend, ends up numbered H.R. 3997 when they're already well into the 7000s with House bills already (they're numbered in order of their introduction), the answer is that they're going back to a trick we've seen them use before -- taking an old bill that has passed one House but not both, and hollowing it out and replacing that text with the new stuff.

So H.R. 3997, an old tax bill that passed the House, bounced back and forth a few times after being amended, but was never passed in the same form by both houses, which means it's still available as a legislative vehicle. That means that technically, what's under consideration in the House today is an amendment to the Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 3997.

Seriously.

Why? Because pretending that the bailout package is just a new amendment (in the nature of a substitute) for what now stands as the old body of H.R. 3997 means they can get expedited consideration on the House floor, plus be protected from a Republican motion to recommit [send back to committee, essentially killing the bill].

In addition to doing this to speed the bill through with fewer chances to kill it, I think they're also doing this to obfuscate their votes. It's a lot easier to look up online who voted for "HR 3997" than it is to look up "who voted for an amendment to the senate amendment to the house amendment to the senate amendment to HR 3997."

Every Congressman already has a vote on the record for the original version of HR 3997, which was originally "The Defenders of Freedom Tax Relief Act of 2007." It's purpose was "to provide tax relief and protections for military personnel." Of course now it's being amended to be something completely different and will have a completely separate vote for the amendment. This will make it much more difficult for the average citizen to sort through all of this and determine whether their congressman voted for the bill last year as originally intended to provide tax relief to members of the military, or voted this year to pass the bailout.

 

[Ack]

Bump. The vote on this is coming up soon. You can watch on cspan or cnn.com

 

[ghengis86]

bump again...

 

[reduen]

Thank you very much for this explanation! No wonder I could not find the results....

 

[Ack]

Yes, I think that this kind of confusion was exactly what they were hoping for when they set it up this way.

 

[Razmear]

Bump cuz I was wondering the same thing.

eb