content: Once a bill is finalized and congress decides they want to jam it through, the bill being defeated doesn't really mean much. For instance they can later attach it as a rider on a budget bill, military funding bill, or whatever else to make sure it gets passed without having to go through the normal democratic processes. Think about how things like SOPA/PIPA/etc were constantly defeated for years with extensive efforts from the public so congress decided to simply jam even more oppressive measures through in the form of the CISPA by attaching it to the federal budget bill. As always the problem is that republican, democrat - these labels no longer mean much of anything. Congress now a days is almost exclusively corporatist. Democrats, republicans, they both in the end bend to big money donors and lobbyists. And in our congress - those big donors and lobbyists nearly all represent big corporate interests.