By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
In the event that they can’t garner enough votes to pass the Senate health care bill in the House, leader are now taking procedural steps to allow a “deem and pass” vote which would allow disaffected members in their house to pass the legislation without actually voting for the bill.
The Hill is reporting that House leaders are becoming more serious about the possibility of having to use the so-called “Slaughter Solution.” This procedure will allow the Rules Committee to adopt a self-executing rule that would “deem” the Senate bill passed when House members vote on changes to the bill, thus avoiding a direct vote on the grossly unpopular reform bill.
Evidence of how seriously lawmakers are considering this idea came yesterday when the House Rules Committee released a memo defending the procedure, saying it has a long precedent in the House.
“For starters, despite what the minority may claim, the precedent for adopting a resolution and at the same time concurring in a Senate amendment to a bill was set back in 1933,” the Rules memo states.
It also noted that the House used the procedure in February to pass an increase to the federal debt limit, and that the model has been used “far more often by Republicans than Democrats” over the years.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) acknowledged Monday that the procedure is an option under consideration. Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), after whom the option is named, told The Hill that leaders “haven’t come to any conclusions on that yet.”
The move is being denounced by minority leadership. While speaking on the floor of the U.S. Senate yesterday, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called the prospect of using the Slaughter Solution “jaw-dropping in its audacity.”
“Anybody who thinks this is a good strategy isn’t thinking clearly. They’re too close to the situation,” he said. “They don’t realize that this strategy is the only thing that they or this Congress will be rememberd for. Anyone who endorses this strategy will be forever remembered for trying to claim they didn’t vote for something they did.”
House Republicans are set to announce plans to introduce a resolution that would prevent the House Rules Committee from authorizing the “Slaughter Solution.”
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, suggested in a blog for American Spectator magazine that passing healthcare via the Slaughter Solution was unconstitutional, and would inevitably face a court challenge.
“[L]isten closely and you will hear the sound of every conservative organization hiring a retinue of lawyers to queue up to take any health care bill passed under the ‘Slaughter House Rules’ straight to federal court,” McCotter wrote. “Finally, one is tempted to think such an unconstitutionally enacted government-run health-care ‘law’ will meet the same frosty reception from at least five Supreme Court Justices that they received from Congressional Leftists during the State of the Union.”
But even if they do manage to use the controversial process, Hill reporter Ian Swanson does not believe voters will be fooled. “A vote in favor of the rule would represent a vote for the Senate bill,” he writes, “and would likely be rolled into hundreds of political commercials to be run this fall, when Democrats could lose dozens of seats.”
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