House Democrats weigh controversial rule in health care vote

Can the House of Representatives pass a health care bill without actually voting on it?

That question -- bizarre to most casual political observers -- took center stage Tuesday as top House Democrats struggled to find enough support to push President Obama's top legislative priority over the finish line.

The House is expected to vote this week on the roughly $875 billion bill passed by the Senate in December. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, needs 216 votes from her 253-member caucus to pass the measure. No Republicans are expected to back it.

Pelosi's problem: A lot of House Democrats don't like the Senate bill. Among other things, some House members have expressed concern the Senate bill does not include an adequate level of subsidies to help middle- and lower-income families purchase coverage. They also object to the Senate's proposed tax on high-end insurance plans. The House passed its more-expansive health care bill in November.

Pelosi's solution: Have the House pass the Senate bill, but then immediately follow up with another vote in both chambers of Congress on a package of changes designed in part to make the overall legislation more acceptable to House Democrats.

I cannot believe this is even legal. Someone needs to challenge this.

www.cnn.com...

Your not at work right now are you? :-) Sorry couldn't resist!
It is obvious that the congress is not acting for the people, rather is spite of the people. We need checks and balances back so the two worthless parties can go back to canceling each other out.

-E-

[edit on 16-3-2010 by MysterE]

reply to post by Misoir


This is more 'death panel' tripe intended to get the uninformed and irrational all stirred up. Based on the meager showing at the protest today, this strategy is having diminishing returns:

www.huffingtonpost.com...

The first time that the chamber used what's known as a "deeming resolution" -- the mechanism Democrats are leaning toward using to pass the Senate health care bill through the House -- was March 16, 1933. Then, as now, it involved a bill that had little support in the chamber among individual Democrats, but all of them knew they had to pass it. Very few Democrats want to vote for the Senate version of health care reform, but most are okay with it as long as it's amended through reconciliation. Less than two weeks into FDR's first 100 days, Congress needed to raise its debt ceiling, a ritual vote that hasn't gotten any easier for the majority party in the intervening 77 years -- and is still political fodder for partisan opponents. Instead of voting on the underlying Senate bill to raise the debt ceiling in 1933, the House voted on Resolution 63, which stated that "immediately upon the adoption of this resolution the bill H.R. 2820, with Senate amendments thereto, be, and the same hereby is, taken from the Speaker's table to the end that all Senate amendments be, and the same are hereby, agreed to."

Why are people so vulnerable to being manipulated in this fashion. Don't you have any curiosity or sense of responsibility for checking the validity of something before just spewing out the raw talking points?

More recently, Grim notes that deeming resolutions were used by Republicans "36 times in 2005 and 2006," and by Democrats "49 times in 2007 and 2008." The second salvo from health care opponents arrived in the form of complaints that Louise Slaughter once opposed the use of her own "Slaughter Rule" on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. As Ezra Klein explains, that's true: So today's furor is that Nancy Pelosi and Louise Slaughter joined Public Citizen in a lawsuit arguing that a bill that George W. Bush signed was invalid because Deem and Pass is unconstitutional. But the court ruled against Public Citizen, Pelosi and Slaughter. Deem and Pass, well, passed. And now Democrats are using it, too. Of course, the fact that Slaughter learned that deeming resolutions were entirely above board is probably what informed her decision to employ a deeming resolution!

Best,
Skunknuts