Reply #50: Senate Republicans will attach a line item veto amendment

[Lasher]

This is big trouble. Senate Republicans held up S.1, the ethics reform bill in an attempt to blackmail Democrats into including line item veto power for Junior. Republicans backed off after the Democratic leadership agreed to let the GOP shove the line item veto amendment into the minimum wage increase bill instead of the ethics bill. I believe this will come up on the Senate floor to be voted on as an amendment, but it might show up in language of the basic bill, due to the agreement over S.1.

There is speculation that the provision would be removed when the bill goes into conference to reconcile with the House version but this is too dangerous to risk on that. There's not much point in going to all this trouble to win control of Congress, only to cede power to Junior in this manner.

If I were a Senator and had to vote on a minimum wage increase that included the line item veto, I would vote against it.

You can read more about it here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3063592#3063768

Republicans are taking a hard line on this because Junior has told them to. It's his cure for having just lost his lapdog Congress. It is no coencidence that they tried to pull this off with the very first piece of legislation that was brought up in the new Senate. We should take just as hard a line in opposition. I predict that Senator Byrd, for one, will filibuster anything that includes a line item veto.

Just as others in this thread have said, we need a clean bill with no riders. And certainly not a killer amendment like this one.