Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell asserts, with some evidence, that Democrats broke Senate rules yesterday. It happened after Sen. Tom Coburn, R, Okla., forced the reading of a 767-page amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
The Senate clerk spent the next few hours reading the amendment, but it would have taken until roughly 3 a.m. if he’d continued. Finally, Sanders came to the floor to withdraw his amendment — something that Senate rules say requires unanimous consent. Coburn tried to force the reading to continue, but Democrats just went ahead and ignored him.
McConnell’s statement of yesterday afternoon:
“The plain language of the Senate precedent, the manual that governs Senate procedure, is that unanimous consent of all members was required before the Senator from Vermont could withdraw his amendment while it was being read. Earlier today, the majority somehow convinced the parliamentarian to break with the long standing precedent and practice of the Senate in the reading of the bill.
“Senate procedure states clearly…‘the reading of which may not be dispensed with, except by unanimous consent, and if the request is denied, the amendment must be read and further interruptions are not in order.’
Perhaps it’s just a small matter, but Senate Democrats have already employed a ‘nuclear option’ in order to keep their unpopular health care bill from being derailed from its pre-set timetable.
