[BuckeyeTexan]

Here’s a comment posted with the article at the Heritage site. (Don’t know if the author of the comment is correct or not.)

J. K. Lamper on March 16th, 2010 at 12:49pm said:

The rule governing consideration of the reconciliation bill will incorporate a motion to agree to the Senate bill (actually a Senate-amended House bill). Agreeing to such a motion is perfectly routine and perfectly legitimate. The House will be presented with the opportunity to vote up or down on a measure incorporating that motion, and by adopting it will in turn adopt a procedure for agreeing to exactly the same text as the Senate passed, which will be triggered by the House’s recording of a vote in favor of passage of the reconciliation bill. At no point does the House amend or otherwise alter the text of H.R. 3590 as amended by the Senate. The requirements of the Constitution are satisfied.

[BuckeyeTexan]

Shep Smith and Carl Cameron at Fox News report that this procedure has been used many times before by both parties.

Apparently, they’re relying on either Rep. Slaughter’s statements that this procedure is Constitutional or on her interpretation of the Congressional Research Service Report. Either way, they don’t seem to be considering the facts as reported by The Heritage Foundation.

[Cold Heat]

actually a Senate-amended House bill).

Therein lies the lie. The Senate bill was entirely separate. They wrote a entirely different bill that could never go to conference and did not.

[Oceander]

This is all very nice, and while I disagree with the author's point, I think it misses the larger question. If, as Frau Pelosi herself puts it, "nobody wants to vote on the Senate bill itself," then this is a subterfuge, an attempt to end-run precisely the sort of accountability the Founders intended when they drafted the requirement that each bill be passed by each house of Congress before being presented to the President for signature.

This, more than anything else, is definitive proof that the democrats know, without any doubt, that they are willfully and intentionally acting against the express interests of the people they are supposed to represent. As such, they cannot claim any sort of good-faith mistake for what they are about to do, and they cannot shelter behind the excuse that "I didn't know it was unconstitutional." As such, if they exercise the Slaughter Solution, they are knowingly violating their oaths of office, and should be removed forthwith.