To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (740639 ) 9/21/2013 1:42:16 AM From: bentway Read Replies (1) | Respond to Kevin Drum Feed | Mother Jones Ted Cruz Gets a Lesson in Schoolhouse Rock, Senate Style Here's the process: Harry Reid offers a motion to proceed and then files cloture. Will Cruz filibuster? How can he? At this point, the bill under consideration is the one the House sent over, which includes the defunding language. He can hardly filibuster that. Reid then offers an amendment to strike defunding from the bill. Now Reid files cloture on the bill itself. Will Cruz filibuster? Again, how can he? At this point, this is still the original House bill, complete with the provision to defund Obamacare. So cloture will succeed, at which point the Senate has 30 hours to debate the bill. Reid's amendment comes up for a vote, and since amendments only require a simple majority, it passes. At the end of 30 hours, the bill itself gets a vote, and a simple majority is enough to pass it. So the bill, with defunding struck out, passes easily. In other words, there's no point at which Cruz can filibuster, because he'd be preventing a vote on the very bill he wants to pass. Then, once the defunding clause is struck out, subsequent votes require only a simple majority.on Wednesday that Reid "likely" has the votes to strip the defunding language from the House bill. Cruz is surrendering! But my guess is that a little birdie explained the facts of life to Senator Ted, and once the light bulb went off he realized that he was trapped. He had talked a good game, but there was nothing he could do that wouldn't make him look like an idiot. So he begain the painful but inevitable process of backing down. Poor Ted.
