House fails to pass not-'jobs, jobs, jobs' abortion bill, on purpose

They really don't deserve a building this nice. The House just voted on their anti-abortion bill, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, or PRENDA, the one that would prohibit the abortion practice that doesn't happen in America, gender and race selection, or as David Waldman calls it, PRETENDA.

It failed 248-165. It failed because Republican leadership wanted it to fail. They brought it up under suspension of the rules, which meant it had to have a two-thirds majority to pass. Why would they do that? David explains:

Republicans may think they get the best mileage out of this bill by selling it as compelling and necessary, and then setting it up to fall short, for which they can then blame Democrats. Indeed, if the bill does fail today, it will have been Democrats who prevented it from passing, but only because it will have been Republicans who opted not to use their ability to schedule the bill for consideration under regular order, where it could pass without needing any Democratic support. And they'll likely resort to that later, if the bill doesn't pass today. Why not? If they believe they'll benefit politically by putting Democrats on the record in opposition to this once, surely it can only be better to do it twice.

That's your Congress at work, when it decides to actually come to work. That's the real bullshit.

And, as usual, it's not about "jobs, jobs, jobs."