Liability
Locked Account.
The Senate's bill has to be passed by the House AS IS. No changes. Signed by the President and then the Senate may amend the law. Quite the leap of faith for a Representative facing election in November.
saveliberty, no it doesn't. The house will make amendments, to which the Senate leadership has already agreed, and then the bill will be sent back to the Senate (it will use reconciliation) for passage, and then on to the President.
This bill is going to pass. This is as certain in retrospect as was Katrina breaching the levy walls. Run and stick your finger in the dyke; if you are well insulated, you may pop to the surface later.
Your disagreement with Savelib is more a matter of semantics than substantive.
IF the House modifies the Senate version (as already passed) via any amendments, then the version the House might then be passing will not be the same as the current Senate version. Thus, the House (new) version will not suffice as passage of the same bill.
YOU then note, correctly in my estimation as far as this part goes, that if the House does that (i.e., amends the version they are considering from the Senate), since they will not be passing the SAME version AS the Senate, they will not have passed the same bill. Accordingly, as you said, the AMENDED House version WOULD have to go back to the Senate. At that point, the Senate might make use of a reconciliation vote, but they would be facing the same problem as the House now faces. They would not actually be reconciling anything. They would merely be attempting to pass the new House version for the very first time. How they can use reconciliation to pass a new version is not at all clear.
We all know WHY these shenanigans are going on.
NOBODY wants to do the (very) hard work of hammering out an actual House/Senate reconciliation bill in a joint Congressional committee. For if they TRY, they are very likely to FAIL. Instead, the President and his cohorts are playing a newly designed game: this is the game of "make believe."
I suspect that your high hopes for the eventual passage of this monstrosity are destined to cause you political disappointment.
Good.