JOINT ACT: Streamliing Congressional Debate Act (Passed)

[Sestak]

1. This is a "JOINT RESOLUTION" not a "JOINT ACT". Nothing becomes an act without Presidential signature and this is Congressional rules and do not involve the President, that is one problematic aspect constitutionally.
2. And IIRC, I made a point to stress this so much in the passage of the original resolution and as such to avoid a problem with this. Rules must be passed and voted on by each chamber separately. And no UC does not override the constitution.

Once my head stops spinning, I will review the constitution and find some way to bail this out.

Votes are technically separate, no? they just happen to be going on at the same time. Are you saying the constitution requires them to be in different threads?

[Sestak]

3. The Senate shall elect its leader and other officers, and shall have sole authority to determine its own methods of proceedings.

4.
The House of Representatives shall elect its Speaker and other officers, and shall have sole authority to determine its own methods of proceedings.

Pretty clear here, isn't it? If 5 representatives and 4 senators make a determination with regards to their own rules, they each have the sole authority over their own chambers and thus can change the rules in such a manner. I don't see anything here that would imply the threads need to be separated?

Your point about texts is interesting I suppose but I don't think it's particularly relevant; I'd argue that it's implicit here that the Senate is voting on repealing it from their own rules while the House is doing the same for their rules.

[Sestak]

If you really want to fix it to be bulletproof, you can ask a member of each house to motion that the house in question sees their own house's vote as an independent binding one on their own rules only. If both houses assert this then {since they have full control of interpretation of their own proceedings} there is no issue.

[Sestak]

Look I am not in the mood to quibble with you guys after what I just dealt with at work.

The final result needs to be two separate resolution texts certified with separate vote counts. This is how every previous rules change consideration has been structured. That is not what is in the OP and thus I had every reason to think, it would not be in the final post either unless stated otherwise.

They can be in the same post, and they can even been in the same Joint Resolution Text, as long as they are different sections, with our respective votes only applied to each respective text.

Alright, alright, hang on. Lemme get the separate texts queued up.

[Sestak]

K. Glad we could get this sorted out quickly.




Do we need to restart the vote or can we just consider the past votes to apply since there is substantively no difference to what the members who already voted believed themselves to be voting on?