UPDATED: Read it and weep: Senator Tom Coburn forces reading of 700+ Page single Payer amendment

From American Spectator: 

Sen. Tom Coburn has just demanded that the Senate clerk read the single-payer amendment offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders -- and it's 767 pages.

Typically, Senators offering amendments will ask for unanimous consent to avoid reading the entire meausure, but all it takes is one Senator to object to demand its reading, and Coburn objected to Sanders attempt to dispense with the reading of the amendment.

To give you a sense of how this could delay things, it took the Senate clerk 18 minutes to get through the first 6 pages of the amendment, which were the table of contents. At this current pace, it will take 38 hours to get through the entire amendment.

You can follow along with the amendment here.

UPDATE: The body of the bill seems to be going faster than the table of contents, but it still looks likely to take at least 12 hours at this pace.

While this is a wonderful delay tactic made possible by Democrats' own underhandedness, it will not stop the bill in the end. Democrats are willing to do anything to get this pass and if that means flagrantly skirting their own rules (remember that speed reader) so be it.

I am glad that if anything is being read it is Bernie Sander’s amendment. His flat out call for a single payer system shows Americans what the Democrats are truly after with this ridiculous “reform bill”.

Jim Demint is also threatening to have the whole 2000+-page monstrosity read.  Good for him, time is not on the Democrat’s side and that awful bill ought to take several days to be read.

Watch Coburn and Max Baucus square off here. Baucus sounds beyond ridiculous trying to say that it is impossible for all the Senators to read and understand the bill. Umm, Max, if they are that stupid, maybe they should step down as senators.

 

UPDATE: Bernie Sanders withdraws single payer amendment


That didn't take long. I guess the last thing Democrats want is to have their socialist ways exposed to the light of day.  I think Jim Demint should make good on his threat, hey you never know, maybe they will withdraw the whole thing.


From The Hill:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday withdrew his single-payer healthcare amendment after Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) initiated a procedural maneuver to shipwreck the measure.

Coburn earlier in the day forced the Senate clerk to read aloud Sanders’s 767-page amendment to the Senate healthcare bill in an effort to halt the healthcare debate. 

Sanders, a self-described “democratic socialist,” spoke on the Senate floor to announce the withdrawal of the measure.

"The day will come, although I recognize it’s not today, when the U.S. Congress will have to vote to stand up to … all those who profit every single year off of human sickness,” Sanders said. "That day will come."

Via: Memeorandum

Via: The American Spectator

Via: Hot Air
Via: The Hill