put it, a full-chamber vote on his nomination would be "a shadow confirmation vote for the next administrator of the EPA".
Not only will that legislation have to go through the entire committee process in the House, whatever emerges will have to meet the "Hastert rule," named after former Speaker Denny Hastert (R-Ill)., which says the majority of the party in control of the House must back a given measure for it to receive a vote by the full chamber.
And the Senate's Democratic leader, Harry Reid, has already admitted that he cannot bring a bill that merges the output of those two committees to a vote by the full chamber until the autumn.Yet it is the Senate Finance Committee that still offers a chance for sensible and successful health reform this year.
The House Judiciary Committee is expected to resume hearings on it this month and all indications are that it will approve the measure, setting up a vote in the full chamber.
Alas, the timetable may be slipping.The House is further along: a 1,990-page final bill was unveiled on November 3rd, and a vote by the full chamber may come as early as November 7th.
The House's agriculture bill, which similarly did not get a vote in the full chamber, would have cut the president's request for the women, infants and children nutrition program by $488 million, even more than the $333 million sliced by sequestration.
A Senate committee approved a similar version of the legislation in 2014, but the bill never received a vote in the full chamber.
In the House, the office of Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va). said he will not allow SOPA to come to a vote before the full chamber in its current form.
To a chorus of boos from angry union members in the visitors' gallery, the State Senate passed the bill, and on Monday evening a key Assembly committee sent it to the full chamber, where a vote was expected later this week.
