Stinger said:
Are you new to politics or something? Why do you think McCain tacked his so-called anti-torture bill to the defense bill instead of making it a stand-alone bill?
That would have passed overwhelmingly anyway, there was a huge amount of bipartisan support for it, it wasn't a couple of days before the holiday break, there was time for debate, and the bill/attachment were debated before they passed. What you're bringing up is not comparable to what I posted about, above. The attachment mentioned above is controversial and has consistantly failed to come to a vote in the Senate. So the GOP has moved to force their agenda through with no debate and no revisions.
It's not really about the fact that it was attached, the government would move at a horribly slow pace if they didn't use this practice. That's not the outrageous part. It's the time-table on which the Senate is expected to act upon this bill+ammendments, allowing very little time for debate or revision, and even if they did revise it, the House would not be there to approve the changes until they resume session next year.
I'd generally prefer that the Senators at least have the opportunity to fully review and debate something so important before voting to pass it. Now, they've been literally forced to pass it immediately to avoid the obvious disaster that would occur if the defense-spending bill that it's attached to fails to pass before the end of the Senate session.
I'm sure this type of thing has been pulled by both parties, but I can't find a single instance that would put the lives of so many of our sons and daughters at risk. All for a controversial piece of legislation that the geological survey has shown would yield very little oil and scarcely make a dent in our dependance on foreign sources. This is a shameful misuse of the rules on the part of the GOP leadership, and I'm sure that whether you support or don't support ANWR drilling, whether you are a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independant, surely you can see how this is reckless.
I doubt that Democrats will be willing to risk the lives of our troops, and they will have to play along this transparant ploy to move their agenda forward, but I'll pose this question, nonetheless: What do you figure would happen now if the Democrats decided to stand their ground and not allow the passage of this legislation?
I figure that the House would either have to call an emergency session to ensure any revision would be passed before the end of their holiday break, or I could be wrong, and they could play politics, allowing the spending bill to lay waiting, risking the lives of our troops in the process. It shouldn't have to be like that, but it seems to be the aim of the GOP leadership to either force the Democrats to look bad by not passing the spending bill, or forcing them to pass attached legislation that the Senate has failed to vote for cloture on repeatedly.