The seriousness of the Senate, in fact of America's entire elected body was un jeopardy last night when the Senate Republicans drafted a new version of the health bill between noon and 10 pm -- to then reveal the health care bill for a midnight vote!
Can American electoral system be more broken? I am sure that this morning, the blame game will start in earnest; Trump will blame the Democrats -- after all they got 120 minutes to review the bill, but were not allowed to ask any question or make any amendement -- clearly their fault if the bill failed!
This morning Mike Huckabee suggested in a Tweet that the 17th amendment should be abolished -- that Senators be elected not by the legislature, as it had in the past, but by the people (BTW this is not really unusual -- in fact the French Senate elections are by elected official in each district). Still, the GOP's view is if we don't get what we want lets change the rules -- never for one minute thinking of the impact of these changes.
Overall, the shamefulness comes from the elected body taking serious decision in the worse partisan way possible -- most GOP senators didn't know what the legislation was they were going to vote on either. While Obamacare was in committees for months, got input from the various participants -- the GOP version (Trumpcare "I will sign anything, just bringing!) got up to 120 minutes of debate that was truncated by one Senator taking the full 120 minutes to talk about almost anything (except healtcare), the intent was to stuff down the new legislation down the throat of America.
Then again, 'merica is getting the government it deserves!
Can American electoral system be more broken? I am sure that this morning, the blame game will start in earnest; Trump will blame the Democrats -- after all they got 120 minutes to review the bill, but were not allowed to ask any question or make any amendement -- clearly their fault if the bill failed!
This morning Mike Huckabee suggested in a Tweet that the 17th amendment should be abolished -- that Senators be elected not by the legislature, as it had in the past, but by the people (BTW this is not really unusual -- in fact the French Senate elections are by elected official in each district). Still, the GOP's view is if we don't get what we want lets change the rules -- never for one minute thinking of the impact of these changes.
Overall, the shamefulness comes from the elected body taking serious decision in the worse partisan way possible -- most GOP senators didn't know what the legislation was they were going to vote on either. While Obamacare was in committees for months, got input from the various participants -- the GOP version (Trumpcare "I will sign anything, just bringing!) got up to 120 minutes of debate that was truncated by one Senator taking the full 120 minutes to talk about almost anything (except healtcare), the intent was to stuff down the new legislation down the throat of America.
Then again, 'merica is getting the government it deserves!
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