On the Self-Executing Rule
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.
March 18th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
I think the dispute only really arises from the belief that this means that the senate can reconcile with a simple majority (which I think the senate parliamentarian has said can’t happen.)
March 19th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
It also means that the current senate Bill will be signed into law by Obama without the house voting on it when and if the reconciliation bill is shot full of holes in the senate and fails. The only reason they are using slaughter is because they don’t have the votes to pass the senate bill, yet it stands a good chance of “passing” and becoming law.
March 19th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
There is a good chance that the senate bill is the final version, since the reconciliation bill could very well be shot full of holes in the senate and die.
March 20th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
If they “deemed” the Senate bill and sent the deemed version to Obama for his signature, I agree that the result would be patently unconstitutional. It would also be political suicide for all of the Reps who were banking on not having to admit they voted for the Senate bill if they really did (i.e., ostensibly voted for something else, but with knowledge that doing so would make the vote they DIDN’T support, pass). Fortunately, it now looks like we’re not going to find out.
March 31st, 2010 at 4:28 pm
“Deem-and-pass” turned out to be a rope-a-dope anyway.
tgirsch´s last blog ..Quote of the Day, 2010-03-31