CNSNews.com - Hoyer Won't Rule Out Voting on Senate Health Bill Without Changes and Sending it Directly to President

CNSNews.com - Hoyer Won't Rule Out Voting on Senate Health Bill Without Changes and Sending it Directly to President: "(CNSNews.com) – House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) won't rule out having the House vote on the Senate health-care bill without making any changes in it, which would allow the bill to go directly to President Barack Obama without having to pass through a House-Senate conference committee and another round of votes in the House and Senate--and a longer period of public scrutiny of what the text of the proposed law actually says.

“I won’t rule it out or in because I don’t know what the package is,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com on Tuesday.

'However, content will be critical in what action the House takes,” he added a moment later.

Under the proposal, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) would offer the Senate’s version of health reform as an amendment to a House-passed bill, H.R. 1586, which levies a 90-percent tax on bonuses received this year by employees of financial institutions that took at least $5 billion in government bailout money. Reid's amendment would strip out the substance of H.R. 1586 as passed by the House and replace it with the entirety of the Senate health care bill.

As a senior aide to Reid explained to CNSNews.com, this would be done because the Constitution only allows the House to initiate revenie bills, and since the Senate health care bill contains revenue provisions it technically cannot be initiated in the Senate. By being amended into the 'shell' of H.R. 1586, which is a House-initiated revenue bill, the Senate health care bill would technically become a House bill.

If Reid can muster enough votes (60) to overcome a filibuster of this maneuver and filibusters of any amendments subsequently made to the bill, Senate Democrats could pass their health care bill and send it back to the House, where it nominally originated. See related story here."