If this account of Nancy Pelosi’s “deemer” trick is accurate, then I’m not really sure what all the fuss is about. According to the story, no one is talking about “deeming” the House to have passed the Senate bill so that the Senate bill can become law without a vote. Rather, they’re considering ”deeming” the House to have voted for a bill they don’t want in its present form, so that the House can then go on to vote for the version it actually wants. I realize this is cutting corners under House rules, but as a constitutional matter, why should anyone outside the House even care what is “deemed” about any version of the bill other than the final one? Unless you’re a diehard fan of House rules, great, but the only thing the rest of us should care about is whether a majority of sitting Representatives and a majority of sitting Senators actually voted for the final version of each bill that ends up on the President’s desk for his signature. There is no earthly reason to care what anybody “deems” or doesn’t “deem” about anything else.
That said, ObamaCare is a stinker on substance, so if all this pseudo-constitutional hand-waving is what it takes to keep a bad bill from passing, I’ll take that result.