House Democratic leaders believe they have hit on a new way to potentially force House Republican leaders into allowing a vote on a “clean CR” funding the government without any defunding of Obamacare attached.
... SNIP ...
Previously, it was thought this could not work, because a discharge petition takes 30 legislative days to ripen, so if this were tried with the clean CR that passed the Senate, this couldn’t bear fruit until some time in November.
But now House Democrats say they have found a previously filed bill to use as a discharge petition — one that would fund the government at sequester levels.
Greg Sargent
The bill in question was actually authored by a Republican, none other than James Lankford of Oklahoma. Now a couple of Democrats, Chris Van Hollen and George Miller, are reviving this bill.
If they can get every Republican who has said they favor a clean CR to sign the discharge petition, plus hold the Democrats together, this maneuver might end the shutdown by October 14th.
The Lankford bill continues funding at sequester levels for 120 days. I believe those numbers are actually higher than those in the Senate CR.
Like Mr. T, I pity the fool. I pity the fool who went up against Nancy Pelosi in a game of vote whipping and parliamentary maneuvers with DEATH ON THE LINE!
More seriously, I think this may give the House GOP a way out. They can tell their Tea Brained base that they fought the good fight, but that mean ol' Nancy Pelosi used unfair treachery to sabotage them.
UPDATE
Per Sargent, if the Democrats can get 218 signatures, they can replace Lankford's bill with a clean CR like the Senate bill - which means that I was wrong and Lankford's bill represented a cut from Senate levels. Sorry for that ... but now it doesn't matter.