House GOP Leadership Finds Getting A Majority Of Votes Too Difficult So They Hold A Sham Voice Vote Instead

Remember when Republicans complained about Obama's lawlessness? Good times my friends. Good times.

The GOP wants to spend more money on the "Doc Fix", which would raise the amount paid to doctors for Medicare patients. The thing that needs to be "fixed" is that current law was put into place during the Clinton administration to save money and reduce the deficit. But cuts can never actually happen so when it looks like they will, they have to be "fixed".

Conservatives weren't thrilled with spending more money especially since the Democrats swore ObamaCare would save money by assuming the "doc fix" would never happen even though we all knew it would.

So today Boehner and Cantor found out they couldn't get their way so they simply held a sham vote to ram it through and prevent conservatives from calling them out on it.

House Republican leaders had planned to bring up the “doc fix” under a procedure requiring a two-thirds majority to pass, but after a series of closed-door meetings on Thursday morning, they determined they didn’t have the votes to meet that threshold and didn’t want to stay in session long enough to set up a simple majority vote.

So with just a few members on the House floor before a scheduled vote on an unrelated Ukraine measure, Republicans brought up the Medicare bill by voice vote. When no one in the chamber objected, the measure passed.

“Bullshit,” said a visibly annoyed Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) as he emerged from the floor following the Ukraine vote. When Mulvaney was asked to comment about the upcoming GOP budget, he replied: “I can’t talk about the budget because I’m so pissed about the [doc fix].”

GOP leadership "didn’t want to stay in session long enough to set up a simple majority vote". I'm sorry if doing their damn job is too inconvenient for them.

But hey...bi-partisanship!

Republican leadership worked with their Democratic counterparts to orchestrate the ploy. As members returned to the floor when the House came into session, they discovered that the bill had already passed. Nearly all of them were surprised.

No one had the chance to vote no, no one had a chance to vote yes.

Boehner likes to talk about the House of Representatives being "The People's House". Well today he and his leadership team broke in and trashed the place. Remember this the next time he or Cantor complain out how Obama is lawless.

But yay GOP, right?

posted by DrewM. at 03:57 PM

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