What's going on right now
The Senate is in the throws of trying to pass a state budget this week. Senators get to draw first blood this session, with the House sitting on the sidelines until the Senate is finished.
They won't have to sit long if the Senate's Democratic leaders have their way.
After weeks and months of meetings behind closed doors, leaders unveiled their $17 billion (with a B) budget plan earlier this week. If everything proceeds according to schedule, those $17 billion will be in the House's hands by Friday.
Quick turnaround? You bet. And Republicans have griped they haven't had time to thoroughly review the 400-plus pages that make up the budget.
I can empathize.
The budget comes in two books: a money report with a lovely periwinkle cover and a canary-yellow book containing the actual budget law. I've read them both cover-to-cover twice in the past couple days and still have trouble navigating them.
Oh, well, I don't get a vote.
Tonight, the Senate is conducting the first of two floor sessions to debate the budget.
What does a floor debate sound like? If you're reading this early enough Wednesday evening, you can tune in by surfing over the legislature's home page and clicking on the Senate's "Chamber Audio" link at the top of the page.
If you're late, sorry, my little voice recorder isn't snazzy enough to jack into the audio fee from the chamber.
But here's a sense of what's going on:
By rule, any change that spends more money has to take that money from somewhere else in the budget. Any change that puts the budget out of balance isn't allowed.
Right now (6:20 p.m.) Sen. Fred Smith, a Republican from Clayton, is offering a change that would eliminate all reference to the lottery. I wrote about the lottery here.
Smith is still introducing his amendment, saying that he's offering people who might be opposed to the lottery but not want to vote against the budget an opportunity.
"We're going to give you an opportunity to vote against the lottery and still vote for the budget," Smith said.
We'll see how this turns out.
Update: (6:48 p.m.) Cool! Parliamentary trickery!
Smith's amendment would have put Senators on the spot as voting for or against the lottery. To give his members cover, Sen. Tony Rand, a Fayetteville Democrat, stepped in with a substitute amendment, giving his colleagues some political cover.
Is it related to the lottery? No! Don't be silly. It doesn't need to be.
Rand's amendment is related to the state employees' health plan. (Specifically, it reduced the premium for dependents.)
Senators could vote for the health plan amendment without ever directly voting on the lottery. Of course, the maneuver has the net affect of killing the lottery amendment. But it won't read much like that in the Senate's official record.
So something the Democrats we're going to do anyway passes, a vote on the lottery is avoided, and the Republicans are left to steam.
Whether you like the outcome or not, it's a darned clever use of procedure. (Of course, the folks sitting around me say this is old hat, so call me wide-eyed.)
Rand's substitute passes 49-1. (So good, even lottery opponents voted for it.)
And the debate continues...
Update 2 (7:01 p.m.) And we're done for today. With a few technical changes made, the Senate has closed debate on their budget version. Members voted 29-21 in favor of the bill.
More debate and a final vote (during what is called 3d reading) are scheduled for tomorrow (Thursday).