Too Hot Not to Note: A new low for health care bill?

ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured editorial from the Denver Post, the board lays waste to the Slaughter solution:

A new low for health care bill?

Congress should reject a plan by Democratic leaders to use the “self-executing rule” to pass legislation without an actual vote.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks at a news conference on saving Medicare Tuesday. Pelosi defended the possible use of the “self-executing rule” to pass health care legislation. (Harry Hamburg, The Associated Press)The U.S. Constitution is clear: For a bill to become law, it must pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

If your side lacks the requisite votes, your agenda doesn’t pass.

Yet House Democrats are weighing use of a so-called “self-executing rule” to pass — without actually voting on — the health care bill the Senate squeaked through on Christmas Eve. A leading legal scholar says such a move is unconstitutional. We think, at the very least, that it’s an affront to our representative form of democracy.

If Democrats had the votes to pass the bill in the House, they would. Instead, they’re considering using the “self-executing rule,” which would instead “deem” that it has passed.

We urge Colorado’s congressional delegation to reject this cynical tactic, normally used for minor legislative changes. If not for principle, they should reject it for their own self preservation.

“Self-executing” could mean political suicide.

How could voters trust a lawmaker willing to approve such transformational legislation that lacks a majority of “ayes”?

Democratic leadership is eyeing the approach as a way to protect their members who fear Election Day reprisal if they support the Senate bill, which is loaded with Christmas Eve stocking stuffers, such as sleazy side deals for senators and special interests.

If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chooses to go this route, the “self-executing” rules will be triggered by Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., who chairs the House Rules Committee. But law scholars say the Slaughter maneuver would violate the Constitution’s straightforward language in Article 1, Section 7, which outlines that for a bill to become a law, it “shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate.”

Former 10th Circuit appellate Judge Michael McConnell argued in The Wall Street Journal on Monday that if Democrats used the Slaughter method, the health care package would become law without a single bill having passed in both chambers.

Slaughter’s approach would take the reconciliation process to new lows. The House would craft a bill that made changes to the Senate bill, and then members would vote on that package of changes while “deeming” that the Senate’s Christmas Eve bill had passed.

Yet, in fact, the House would never hold an up-or-down vote on the Senate bill.

Because the reconciliation approach means that Democrats in the Senate don’t need the 60 votes they cobbled together to pass the first version, they could pass the House version with 51 votes and send it to President Obama, who has so far looked the other way on this fiasco.

We urge Democrats not to embark on such a fool’s errand, especially on a bill that doesn’t extend coverage to all Americans or rein in rising health care costs for those individuals and businesses already paying for insurance.

We once were strong proponents of health care reform and had hoped to see a bill that included a public option to bring down costs.

This is a bad bill, and it’s not worth Democrats jumping off this cliff.