Cheney Drops the Bomb

[Chewbaccus]

Welcome to the grand and glorious world of parliamentary procedure, OC.

Actually, (if I remember my Civics class right, and I think I do) before a bill gets a vote in the full House/Senate, it's looked over by the subcommittee that's relative to the nature of the bill (Appropriations, Armed Services, etc. etc.)

If that subcommittee votes in favor of the bill, then it's sent to the House/Senate floor for a full vote. However, there are all kinds of tricks to pull there that can kill the vote - procedural votes that can be initiated and eat up the clock (probably that vote to vote to see if they'll vote you were talking about); amendments can be tacked onto the bill, adding, subtracting, or subtly altering a few parts of the overall bill that can often result in vast shifts of support.

Case in point, from what I understand, the $87 billion that was slated for the Iraq war was, in the original bill, supposed to mostly, if not totally, come from Iraqi oil money. Then the bill was changed to have the taxpayers shoulder most of the burden, resulting in many people fine with the first source of revenue to vote against the bill in the final iteration.