Subject: House Passes Bill: Here is what will happen next.
Will the health-care bill become law?
Here is how the process works...
Dear Pro-life Friend.
We can be very glad that the Stupak Amendment passed, which would effectively ban the use of our money at any level in this health care bill from being used to pay for the murder of children, unless those children had the grave misfortune of being conceived by rape or incest. Then, they can be murdered with our money.
That being stated, this battle is far from over. I make no bones about it: I want to kill this bill. I hate Socialism.
However, I also understand that ethically there is a huge difference between someone robbing me in order to pay for his daughter to have her appendix removed and someone robbing me to pay for the murder of his daughter. One theft involves pursuing life, the other involves pursuing murder.
Now, for the any who are unfamiliar with the process of how bills become laws, let me explain to you some of what lies ahead.
The next focal point in this battle will be the United States Senate.
Republicans have already indicated they intend to filibuster this bill. But, in order to sustain a filibuster, they need 41 votes, and they only have 40 members in the Senate. So, will a Democrat defect from evil, and vote for freedom and life? Will an independent like Lieberman filibuster with the Republicans? We will have to see.
Anyway, before any bill becomes law a bill must pass in the Senate.
Then, because the Senate bill and the House bill have different language, they have to take the bill to what is called a "conference committee."
The C-SPAN Congressional glossary defines conference committee thus: "A CONFERENCE COMMITTEE is a temporary panel of House and Senate negotiators. A conference committee is created to resolve differences between versions of similar House and Senate bills."
The conference committee -- made up of Senators and members of the House of Representatives -- will take the words of both bills and hammer them out so that the words in the bill are exactly identical.
The conference committee is dangerous water for the Stupak amendment. It could be thrown out in committee. There are many amendments that pass in the House or the Senate which get thrown overboard in conference committee.
After the bill is hammered out in committee, it must go back to both chambers -- the U.S. House, and the U.S. Senate -- to be voted on again in its entirety. There have been bills that passed both houses, but when the bill was returned from conference committee it was defeated in one of the chambers because the changes made in committee were unacceptable to the majority of that chamber.
So, if the Stupak amendment gets thrown out in committee, the pro-life House Members who voted for it could kill the bill the next time it comes up for a vote.
If the bill passes in both houses (Senate and House) after the conference committee changes, it goes to the President of the United States, who has 10 days to sign it into becoming law. Obviously, President Obama will sign whatever health care bill reaches him.
So, to recap: there are at least three votes left on this bill before any law could reach President Obama's desk for his signature. first, a vote in the Senate. If 41 senators agree to filibuster, it could be defeated there. The Democrats could avoid the process of filibuster by putting the health care bill in the form of a "reconciliation" bill. You may have heard this bantered about as the "Nuclear Option." The rules of filibuster do not apply to a "reconciliation" bill, so the Dems would only need a simple majority of 51 votes.
If the bill passes the Senate, it must go to a conference committee. Once hammered out there, it goes back to both houses for another vote.
So...we must now turn our full attention to the Senate.
I will be writing soon, to give you some ideas as to what you can do in your area, or here in DC.
If you want to send a personal letter by fax (from you) to every US Senator, you can do so for only 17 1/2 cents each - $17.50 - for all 100 Senators.
Go to http://www.overturnroe.com/obamacare/allsenate.htm to write to all Senators.
And by the way - the video of the sit-in our friends did at Nancy Pelosi's office already has about 34,000 views. If you have not seen it, I urge you to go to www.Youtube.com/randallterry and watch the two videos on the sit-in. I promise you will be inspired.
We have a lot of planning and fighting to do. Please keep us in your prayers.
Randall Terry
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