The anticipated vote in the House of Representatives on the “stimulus” bill has been delayed, and will not occur today as scheduled. Reasons for the delay were not given but the decision does follow a morning of debate, where Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) complained that Members were being asked to vote on a bill they had still not seen. Speaker Pelosi had distributed an overview, but not the actual bill text, and to our knowledge, still has not shared the details of the bill with her Republican colleagues.
The text of the Nelson-Collins “compromise” had been roughly 778 pages, but the now “agreed-to” conference report has DOUBLED to a whopping 1434 pages. With an additional 700 pages in the bill, it is no wonder that Members would like to review the single largest spending bill in this nation’s history before casting a vote.
But, in possibly the most bizarre parliamentarian argument ever made, according to National Journal’s Congress Daily; “Democratic lawmakers fired back that Republicans didn’t need to see the bill anyway, since none of them voted for the stimulus when it moved through the House the first time and would probably stand in opposition.”
It appears that Speaker Pelosi has changed the House rules to demand that Members swear to vote ‘yes’ before they can read bills that they are being asked to consider voting ‘yes’ on? This will certainly save the Republican caucus a tremendous amount of time. We look forward to the speedy passage of all remaining Trillion Dollar liberal spending priorities, without review, transparency or debate, so that we may take a long recess as well.
