Coming Home to a New Stall…

Elly and I just returned from the weekly trip to Federick, Maryland, where we buy health foods and vegan products at The Common Market, a great food coop unlike any we have here in the Shepherdstown area), and, after unloading the bags, I put on C-Span2 to find that the Republicans in the Senate are trying to put a new stall on the bill.

The trick they are trying to pull off  is to say that the Health Care bill violates the 10th Ammendment of the Constitution.

This is the 10th:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

So what the Republicans are saying is that Health Care is not in the Constitution, therefore only the States can do Health Care Bills, and the Senate has no business playing this game. Snator Hutchinson from Texas proposed this, and it lookslike it will come down to an all Republicans versus all Democrats vote, and the Republicans will lose… but they will have accomplished a time stall. I don’t know how long they debated this one, because I was shopping… but the vote on the point of order went 15 minutes and came out 39 to 60, where it fell.

Whew! Now DeMint, Republican from South Carolina, is trying to suspend the rules to have a motion put into place banning “earmarks”, or funding for a personal request by an individual Senator in return for a vote on a Bill. This is, really, another stall. Let’s see how long this one lasts.