Weddingbee boards

There will be a vote, and the headlines are misleading and inflammatory.

Meanwhile, confusion (willful and otherwise) fans the flames of panic on both the left and the right, the right insisting that self-executing rules (not counting the 200+ Republicans used) are, "the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War.  It would be 100 times worse than Watergate," and the left worrying that the procedure creates constitutional problems.

The House, under its constitutional prerogative stemming from Art. I, Sec. 5, determines its own rules of proceeding. All the Constitution requires of it is that approval of bills be signaled by a recording of the yeas and nays in its Journal, and that the same text be agreed to by both houses of Congress. By agreement under the rule, the House will indeed signal its agreement by the yeas and nays to the language of the Senate bill, but it will do so with its vote on the reconciliation bill.

It's no different than when the Senate agrees by unanimous consent to a House-passed bill. Or when the House takes up a motion to agree to the Senate version of a bill, as opposed to bringing the bill itself to the floor and voting on that. The House determines for itself, through its own rules, whether it will accept a Senate bill by calling it to the floor and voting on it directly, or instead by agreeing to a motion to agree to the Senate version.

I think it is really important that we all pay attention to what is *actually* going on and dig a little deeper than inflammatory headlines.  Those are used to get you to watch Fox, CNN or MSNBC, but often provide little information.  I'm a big fan of digging until you get to the boring stuff, because that's usually where the real answer lies!