Today is the day for the vote in the Senate for the Sportsmen’s Act, a bill that pulls together many issues that NSSF and NRA have been pushing lately. According what I saw on C-SPAN earlier, it looks like the vote will come around 5:30pm. However, there’s already been a vote on cloture.
Assuming the vote follows the same lines, it should pass pretty handily. The cloture vote was 84 yeas, 12 nays, and 4 no votes.
At first blush, the “yea’s†and “nay’s†are each comprised of strange bedfellows. Someone wish to comment on the seemingly strange bipartisan nature of both the yes and no votes?
The GOP no votes tend to be your hardliners on budget issues, so my guess is something along those lines. As for the Dems on the no votes, well, they’re just anti-gun and anti-hunting.
I am surprised that Rand Paul voted nay. Why did he do that?
I think the bill is well written overall but I have some concerns. In the language it notes that the duck stamps have not increased in price since ’91 though land cost have gone up. Then it moves the responsibility for setting the duck stamp price from Congress to the Department of Interior. I have my concerns that an a department not subject to popular vote and potentially with their own agenda can set prices that would discourage people from getting the stamps.
NJ holds the distinction of being the only state in the Union to have both its Senaturds vote Nay. Even Barbara Boxer and Chuck Schumer voted Yes…
Boxer voted no. Feinstein voted yes.
Erin, I suspect Paul’s opposition comes from his general opposition to much federal regulation. Note that also voting no were DeMint, Toomey, and Lee, who like Paul pretty serious “tea party” type. I think more confusing were the no votes from Kyl, Sessions, Cornyn, and Coburn. Who knows … if it was close, many of those “R’s” might have been found in the YES column.
If Coburn voted no I would expect him to have a very good reason; ignoring some new Senators like Paul who don’t have records established yet, I’ve been counting him as our one true supporter in the Congress for some time. So I wonder what’s up.
A one-sided vote on cloture usually means that those that vote ‘yea’ for cloture believe they have the numbers for the final vote to go their way.
The number in favour of cloture says NOTHING about which way that final vote will go.
‘Who’ votes for cloture is more telling than ‘how many’, and in this case the ‘who’ is a confusing mix.