{"id":4160,"date":"2009-10-28T14:25:51","date_gmt":"2009-10-28T19:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=4160"},"modified":"2009-10-28T14:25:51","modified_gmt":"2009-10-28T19:25:51","slug":"a-vote-to-debate-health-care-is-a-vote-for-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=4160","title":{"rendered":"A Vote To Debate Health Care Is A Vote for Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/10\/28\/health\/policy\/28health.html\">reporting by David M. Herszenhorn and Robert Pear<\/a> for the<em> New York Times<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said that in his view a vote to debate the legislation would be tantamount to supporting it, which he said would raise taxes and increase health care costs.<\/p>\n<p>Such a vote, Mr. McConnell said, \u201cwill be treated as a vote on the merits of the bill.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Obviously, McConnell can say whatever he wants, but isn&#8217;t anyone in the Senate willing to stand up for the basic principle of democracy: majority rule. Minority rights must be protected, but when a minority is able to even prevent official debate on a law, things have gone too far. Strategically, McConnell has no choice &#8211; but by forcing the Senate to have a supermajority to even consider pressing legislation, he undermines the institution of the Senate itself. (And this supermajority requirement whereby any individual simply by threatening to filibuster can prevent debate isn&#8217;t part of the original balance of powers &#8211; but is a new development.)<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;d hope a bunch of Senators would take that into consideration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to reporting by David M. Herszenhorn and Robert Pear for the New York Times: The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said that in his view a vote to debate the legislation would be tantamount to supporting it, which he said would raise taxes and increase health care costs. Such a vote, Mr. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,1023,4],"tags":[2360,2362,2361,148],"class_list":["post-4160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-domestic-issues","category-health-care-domestic-issues","category-politics","tag-david-m-herszenhorn","tag-mitch-mcconnell","tag-robert-pear","tag-the-new-york-times"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-156","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4160"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4162,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4160\/revisions\/4162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}