Anyone who stayed up to the last bill in the last hour on the last day was rewarded with some high drama–and I hope they weren’t hijinks. Dunnam had a valid point of order on the electricity bill, which missed the runway in trying to land safely in the conference committee. The chair upheld the point of order. Phil King was allowed to challenge the ruling of the chair. This raised a difficult situation, because in order to vote on the bill, the members were going to have to vote not to sustain the chair’s ruling, athough it was clearly correct. This would have set a bad precedent, or perhaps I should say another bad precedent. King, seeing the situation, elected not to press the matter.
My only concern about this, which a trusted source on the floor tells me not to worry about, is that certain lobbyists have been saying for weeks that KKR, the big money in this fight, would prefer to have no bill at all. Lo and behold, this is what they are going to get. I don’t think that what went on tonight was a dog and pony show, but, as I said, this is what lobbyists in the know were saying was going to happen, and indeed it happened.
SINE DIE!
