"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:


"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote in message
8.3.70...
"Ed Huntress" fired this volley in
:

It is not Constitutional for Congress to pass a law that says future
congresses can't overturn it. It wouldn't stand up if they tried.



I already knew that. This is a regularly-circulated chain letter from
the abjectly right-ish folks who can't actually figure out how to go
vote.

Ah, it would have helped if you'd added a smiley or something. I thought
you
actually believed that stuff.

But Ed, they are trying to pass this on a one vote margin in the Senate
and according to
an earlier link:

The Examiner takes issue with this language:

###
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Dec 24 2009: LIMITATION ON
CHANGES TO THIS
SUBSECTION - It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of
Representatives to
consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would
repeal or
otherwise change this subsection.

But that does not mean that "no future Senate or House will be able to
change a single
word" of the section, as The Examiner says. The paragraph is followed
directly by this
one:

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Dec 24 2009: WAIVER - This
paragraph may
be waived or suspended in the senate only by the affirmative votes of
three-fifths of the
Members, duly chosen and sworn.

he intent is to make this cost-saving mechanism difficult to repeal, but
not impossible.
"If they want to repeal this provision they need a supermajority," said
Bill Dauster,
deputy staff director and general counsel of the Senate Finance Committee.
The bill's
Democratic drafters fear that Congress can't be trusted to make necessary
Medicare cost
reductions on its own. "The reasoning is that the Senate is not going to
make the cuts
that are necessary otherwise."
###

So as they are maneuvering, they want to pass on 51 and require 60 to
revoke it?

Nope. It still requires only 51 (in the Senate) to overturn the entire bill.


Can I assume that the 60 number to revoke is meaningless? As in another
senate with a
willing house can take it down with a simple majority vote?

It has the status of House rules, but nothing in the House rules can preempt
Congress's ability to overturn any legislation. They can change a rule at
any time, and they can overturn a bill at any time.

Again, it's procedural, and amounts to a House rule. It cannot preclude
future congresses from overturning it by a simple majority vote. But they'd
have to overturn the rule as well as the legislation.

It really isn't worth getting worked up about. It's an attempt to keep
underhanded amendments from defeating the function of the legislation by the
back door. It's been done before.

--
Ed Huntress