Let's learn about arcane government processes!

And the vote got delayed until tomorrow, The Toddler is taking an interesting position now, demanding that come hell or high water, the vote will happen tomorrow and no matter what the result, he wants to move on to other stuff. This is mind boggling. I'll talk more about it later, but first some details of why this shit is so hard for them.

First, you know what the filibuster is right? It is a tool that the minority party can use to block legislation from passing without a majority of votes, it has been used with increasing frequency over the past decade and is there to prevent a government controlled by one party from going out of control with changes, it is a vital check on our government. In the Senate, it means the GOP needs 60 votes to pass legislation rather than a simple majority, if the Democrats choose to use it, as they will should the current bill reach the Senate. Filibustering once upon a time meant that those opposed to a bill would talk until everyone got tired and went home, however these days the Senate doesn't really want to work that hard so it is just a tool and the extra talking is simply assumed, however the definition of filibuster is important.

Right now we aren't talking about the Senate, the bill is currently in the House, success there will bring it to the Senate, where it would assuredly be filibustered except...

There is a fairly arcane rule called budget reconciliation, this process is used on budget bills, as the name implies, and limits debate to twenty hours before a vote must be taken, here is where the idea of filibustering being somebody actually talking forever comes in, because that is the assumption when the filibuster is invoked, then we assume that discussion on the bill must be longer than twenty hours, so you can't filibuster something that is under budget reconciliation because the nonspecific amount of time a filibuster is assumed to take is longer than the amount of time allowed for discussion under the rule!

So why don't we see more rules passed using budget reconciliation? Well it is limited to budget bills, which means it really can only apply to how the government is spending money, so it can't include just straight up setting policy or repealing a law, but it can include changing how that law is funded or how revenue is spent. As you might expect, the definitions are not as clear as one might hope, and are frequently stretched, as they are in the current health care bill, but there are some strong limitations even so.

Which is why this current bill is disliked by both sides, Democrats and some moderate Republicans are against it because it allows insurance companies too much power to drop clients or raise rates, the more assholish Republicans hate it because it doesn't do enough to kill Obamacare, yet under the very rule the Republicans chose to try to pass the law, it literally cannot kill Obamacare.

This basically means the bill was pretty dead in the water as soon as it's details were revealed, passing under budget reconciliation means the watered down nature of the bill doesn't appeal to anyone, yet attempting to pass it without that rule means that it would be subject to a Senate filibuster.

Are we clear? Good, let's move on to how it is mind boggling that The Toddler is forcing the vote tomorrow and if it fails he will just take his ball and go home. For eight years now the GOP has been trying to kill Obamacare with no success, and now, our president, the man who ran specifically on killing Obamacare, is saying that if we don't do it this way and right now, he is just going to move on and everyone else should too. So does that mean he will actively work against any future legislation attempting to change the ACA? Because it certainly sounds like he won't be putting any support into it at least. In one stroke, he is basically casting aside one of his biggest campaign promises, throwing a significant portion of his House and Senate support away, and ensuring the survival of Obamacare in it's current form.

I cannot for the life of me conceive of a scenario where this helps him, and it looks an awful lot like a child refusing to play a game because everyone else isn't just letting them win.

Is that going to be how he governs? Is the secret to opposing The Toddler simply to say no until he gets fed up and moves on? Will he give up his budget too? Because people, it kinda looks that way from here.

Tomorrow the House votes, and the Trumpcare bill is likely dead there, but if it does make the Senate it doesn't appear to have the votes there either for the same reasons I outlined above, and if it does pass the Senate then we can expect legal challenges due to the way the budget reconciliation rules were twisted to accommodate the bill.

It's the first major challenge of the current administration and it really doesn't look like they are standing up to it.

My heart bleeds.