House Dems Punk Republicans On Budget Vote (VIDEO) - pandemonium, Republicans panic & change votes

[highplainsdem]

TPM ran a story on this earlier, promised video but hasn't added it yet.

So here's a link to the story and video at Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/15/house-democrats-republicans-budget_n_849715.html

House Democrats Punk Republicans On Budget Vote (VIDEO)
First Posted: 04/15/11 12:56 PM ET


-snip-

During a series of votes on alternative budget proposals, Democrats made a play to sucker GOP lawmakers into passing a proposal from the conservative Republican Study Committee that calls for dramatic cuts that even some GOP Members would find too drastic.

At one point during the vote, a majority of Republicans were on record in favor of the RSC budget. Democrats then began casting votes as “present,” rather than “no,” as they would be expected to do. Without the Democratic "no" votes, the amendment would be adopted and would supersede Budget ranking member Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) ballyhooed budget.

After time for the vote expired, Republicans held it open so that enough of them could switch their votes to prevent the RSC budget from passing.

In the end, only 119 of the 176 RSC Members voted for their own budget proposal, authored by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.). Because so many Democrats voted "present," meanwhile, the final tally was 136-119 against – a bizarre total in a chamber with 435 members. Had nine Republicans not switched sides, the measure would've passed. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) switched her vote from "aye" to "no" at the last minute, as did Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Rules Committee.

-snip-

Link to the earlier topic about the article at TPM:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x898288

My thanks to Green_Lantern (reply 32 there) for posting this HuffPo link.