Thread by @BobKerns

@rawphonegirl @BCAppelbaum Hi. Do you understand what that vote was? Let me walk you through it.
First, the bill under consideration was titled H.R.648 - Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2019

It would fund various parts of the government. It passed. Only 10 Republicans voted for it.

@rawphonegirl @BCAppelbaum You can read the full roll call on the bill here:
clerk.house.gov/evs/2019/roll0…

@rawphonegirl @BCAppelbaum And the text here. Go read it. You won't find anything about paying the affected federal employees. It's a straight-forward "let's reopen the government" bill.

congress.gov/bill/116th-con…

@rawphonegirl @BCAppelbaum So what WAS the vote you linked? And what's all this about paying the workers?

Well, there's a right way and a wrong way to do that. And honest way, and a dishonest one. Guess which one this is?

The honest way, would be to introduce a bill to do that. This is not that.

@rawphonegirl @BCAppelbaum So what WAS this? And what was it trying to do?
For that, we need to turn to the Congressional Record. I used to get that daily in paper form starting in 1970. Today it's an easy search on the Congress website, and searchable,—only took a minute to find it
bit.ly/2FLniHd

@rawphonegirl @BCAppelbaum So what this is, is an attempt by Ms. Granger to (a) kill the bill and (b) embarrass the Ds by forcing them to vote against something in the process of not killing it. It's a common dirty trick, and utterly meaningless. Granger was not trying to pay workers.

@rawphonegirl @BCAppelbaum To do that, she could introduce a bill in the ordinary process. That's how it's supposed to work, when reps aren't playing to the cameras.

No, THIS is what she did:

@rawphonegirl @BCAppelbaum That is, replace the ENTIRE BILL being considered to reopen the government, with one to pay workers while keeping it closed.

And THAT is the vote you cited. A meaningless gotcha, in the form of an attempt to kill reopening the government MASQUERADING as pay-the-workers.

@rawphonegirl @BCAppelbaum Dishonest AF but all too common. Beware of all "Rep X voted against doing Y" claims. Make sure they're actually voting on a bill, not some lame fake amendment introduced on the floor for nefarious purposes.