Honesty? No Comment

11Mar NCSJP Featured Post, GA, Health Care No comments

For those following the train-wreck of a legislative session, this week was quite a doozy. Here is a big of background for those just catching up: Following the passage of HB 2, the bill designed to remove North Carolina from the federal health care overhaul, Governor Purdue vetoed the bill following an opinion from Attorney General Roy Cooper stating that the bill is unconstitutional. This was all good, until the Republicans attempted to override the veto on Wednesday night. They failed to persuade any Democrats to vote for the override, and we thought that was that. However, during a strange mid-day break in the session yesterday, House Republicans apparently came up with a tricky parliamentary maneuver. To save you the gritty details, they may now try again to override the bill at any time.

All of this was surprising, but far from unprecedented. Parliamentary creativity is always an option, and it seems it was successfully deployed here. What we found rather galling, however, is how the House majority leadership was spinning their actions.

When Hackney was asked if he though Republicans were being honest in their dealings with the Democrats, since they told Democrats that there would be no vote, and their mid-day break was a previously scheduled caucus meeting, he responded:

“Well, I don’t want to get into things like that,” Hackney said. “At the end of the day, they didn’t do it.”

Tillis said Republicans showed good faith by not ramming through the veto override and that it would be his office policies to keep all vetoed bills alive until the end of session.