House Dems: Nancy Pelosi Tricked Us

Many people are still trying to figure out what exactly Congress voted to do last week when they passed their fake budget. Kagro and Dave Dayen go back and forth here, here  and here.

But one thing is for certain: if procedural experts are still trying untangle what happened, there is no way 215 members of Congress knew what they were voting for at the time they cast their votes.

I got this from a Hill staffer that evening:

The real story on this thing is that Members were whipped on the rule before the leadership gave us specifics about what was in the budget resolution or what the amendments would look like. We were merely told that there was a budget and it would be tied to the rule and there would be some sort of seperate vote on the war funding. We got details about the budget resolution in the last 24 hours. It’s bull___ that they claim members knew what they were getting into when they didn’t know the intimate details of the budget resolution or the rule itself until right before the vote.

I’m putting it up because it reflects what I heard from many offices that evening: Nancy Pelosi threw the rule up for a vote and sneaked it by without telling even her own members what she was asking them to vote for. She demanded they vote with leadership on a procedural motion or risk retribution, twisted arms and threatened people to get the votes she needed, and didn’t tell them she had slipped in language to cover her own ass with the Catfood Commission.

Majority Whip James Clyburn has been meeting with the commission, and afterwards he was openly supporting benefit cuts to Social Security such as raising the retirement age and means testing — curiously, the exact same talking points John Boehner is parroting. It’s downright deceitful of Pelosi to condemn Boehner for saying the same things about cutting benefits that her own Democratic leadership is saying.