Bipartisan infrastructure pact clears key Senate vote after breakthrough in talks

[BumRushDaShow]

12. I watched the hearings, the markups, the amendments, the debates, and all the votes

from Obama's first "Health Care Summit" meeting in February 2009 with stakeholders, through to final passage of the reconciliation in March 2010 (after Democrats had to deal with their own who were part of the "Stupak 17", who threatened to kill the whole thing due to their problems with the reproductive health & abortion, since they didn't even feel that the Hyde Amendment was enough).

So we are basically saying the same thing but we're also talking about 2 different sets of circumstances (based on the Senate's party breakdown), 2 different pieces of legislation, and a pile of very different sets of actions.

For what eventually became the PP-ACA, there were something like 6 Committees across both chambers working on their own versions of "the bill", although the way the media was portraying it was as if each Committee's markup in either chamber would be the "final" version, causing DU to continually freak out all summer long, and into the fall during that sausage-making process.

There were a number of "cloture" votes during the Senate Amendment process once they initially voted on cloture to consider the House's version "as is", which they then amended profusely.

Since both chambers had passed or modified their own bills and they were obviously different, a joint Conference Committee was formed to reconcile the different versions, and then use THAT version for their respective chambers for consideration (with stipulations on limiting amendments, etc) and a final vote. The media had a field day once more on "the bill... the bill... the bill".

There was a final cloture vote in the Senate on THAT (joint) version, and THAT is what originally passed in December, and went to the House for final passage.

The result was missing some critical features that needed fixes added, but by then, Democrats lost a super-majority to thwart a cloture on the fixes legislation, so their "fix" had to be done in a 2nd piece of legislation as reconciliation.

THAT is the "2nd cloture" issue that I'm talking about (not the internal motions to proceed/clotures that are part of the normal Senate Amendment process).

The 2 bills were these -

H.R.3590 - Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

H.R.4872 - Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010

The floor action for all of this is here - https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/house-bill/3590/all-actions?overview=closed#tabs

Yes I am a CSPAN junky and followed this (along with my mom who was a CSPAN junky) and experienced the summer drama with Al Franken finally being seated and my own Senator Arlen Specter switching parties to give Democrats the 60 votes needed to not have to worry about cloture.

Regarding the infrastructure bill - they have no choice but to have to use reconciliation for some part of it, due to being forced to whittle stuff down to get the 60 votes for the main bill (which is something that was never an issue for the ACA until they realized they needed a fix for it but then lost the ability to do it under regular order).