Posted on 03/16/2010 11:36:03 AM PDT by truthandlife
Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), the ranking Republican on the House Rules Committee, indicated yesterday that he was resigned to letting congressional Democrats make the Senate health-care bill the law of the land without ever holding a vote on it in the House of Representatives by passing a rule governing debate on another bill, the budget reconciliation, that "deems" the health care bill as passed.
Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution, however, expressly states that for any bill to beome law "the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by the yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively." After that, under the Constitution, the president must either sign the bill or hold it for ten days (not counting Sundays), after which it will become law unless Congress adjourns in the interim.
Constitutional scholars have said that what the Democrats may try to do by making the Senate health care bill law without ever voting on it in the House is unconstitutional and could spark a constitutional crisis far worse than Watergate.
Dreier, who is the top House Republican responsible for making sure that Congress follows legitimate rules of procedure, told reporters yesterday that he is not a constitutional expert and that he had not spoken personally to any constitutional experts about the issue. He did say he had indirectly gotten "input" from such experts.
“If this passes and is signed into law, I think it becomes law,” Dreier said. “I’m not a constitutional lawyer and that’s the response from some of the experts with whom I’ve spoken – I didn’t speak to but have gotten some input from. I’m not in a position to raise the (constitutionality) question right now.”
Dreier said there is nothing the majority party (Democrats) cannot do so long as the Rules Committee, where Democrats hold a 9-4 majority, authorizes it. This would include passing health reform without actually voting on it.
“There’s nothing that can prevent it,” Dreier said. “It’s something, David [a reporter], that they can clearly do, if they have the votes.”
The plan Dreier was asked about is called the Slaughter Solution, named for Rules Committee chairwoman Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.).
The Rules Committee sets the rules of debate for legislation before it is brought to the House floor. Under normal circumstances the committee lays out how much time each side is allowed for floor debates and which amendments they can offer on the floor. Amendments that the majority does not want debated or offered on the floor are often added to legislation in the Rules Committee.
Such self-executing rules, as they are known, have been used by both parties to avoid extended debate on politically embarrassing matters, such as raising the national debt ceiling.
If Democrats use the Slaughter Solution, it would send the Senate-passed bill to the president to sign, and the amendments package would go to the Senate, where it presumably would be taken up under the budget reconciliation process.
Dreier said he had “explored” questions of the plan’s legality and found that the bill would still become law.
“I’ve explored that earlier today and I think that if it becomes law, it becomes law,” he said. “I think that that’s the case.”
The question of constitutionality of the so-called Slaughter Solution stems from the plain language of Article I, Section VII of the Constitution, which states that all bills must pass Congress via a vote in both chambers that is recorded in their journals:
“Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sunday excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.”
Radio host, Landmark Legal Foundation President, and former Justice Department Chief of Staff Mark Levin said that the Slaughter Solution was a “blatant violation” of the Constitution on his radio program on Thursday, March 11.
“I can’t think of a more blatant violation of the United States Constitution than this,” said Levin. “If this is done, this will create the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. It would be 100 times worse than Watergate. It would be law by fiat, which would mean government by fiat.”
President Barack Obama, flanked by health care professionals, speaks about health care reform in the East Room of the White House on March 3, 2010. (AP File Photo/Alex Brandon) Constitutional law expert Arthur Fergenson, who litigated the Buckley v. Valeo case enshrining campaign spending as a form of constitutionally protected speech, weighed in on Levin’s Thursday program, calling the plan “ludicrous,” saying that such a move would be “dangerous” because it would amount to Congress ignoring the clear constitutional provision for how a law is approved.
Fergenson explained that both chambers of Congress must each vote on identical bills before the president can sign them into law. Any bill signed by the president that had not first been voted on by both the House and Senate would be a “nullity,” he said.
“It’s preposterous, it’s ludicrous, but it’s also dangerous,” Fergenson said. “It is common sense that a bill is the same item. It can’t be multiple bills. It can’t be mash-ups of bills. It has to be identical, that’s why the House and Senate after they pass versions of the bill--and we just had this with what was euphemistically called the jobs bill--if there are any changes they have to be re-voted by both chambers until they are identical.”
“Both chambers have to vote on the bill,” Fergenson said. “If this cockamamie proposal were to be followed by the House--and there would be a bill presented (to Obama) engrossed by the House and Senate and sent to the president for his signature that was a bill that had not been voted on identically by the two houses of Congress--that bill would be a nullity. It is not law, that is chaos.”
Former federal judge and the director of Stanford University’s Constitutional Law Center Michael W. McConnell agreed with Fergenson’s assessment. Writing in The Wall Street Journal on March 15, McConnell called the Slaughter Solution “clever but … not constitutional.” McConnell noted that the House could not pass a package of amendments to a health reform bill it had not passed first.
“It may be clever, but it is not constitutional,” said McConnell in the Journal. “To become law—hence eligible for amendment via reconciliation—the Senate health-care bill must actually be signed into law. The Constitution speaks directly to how that is done. According to Article I, Section 7, in order for a ‘Bill’ to ‘become a Law,’ it ‘shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate’ and be ‘presented to the President of the United States’ for signature or veto. Unless a bill actually has ‘passed’ both Houses, it cannot be presented to the president and cannot become a law.”
“The Slaughter solution attempts to allow the House to pass the Senate bill, plus a bill amending it, with a single vote,” wrote McConnell. “The senators would then vote only on the amendatory bill. But this means that no single bill will have passed both houses in the same form. As the Supreme Court wrote in Clinton v. City of New York (1998), a bill containing the ‘exact text’ must be approved by one house; the other house must approve ‘precisely the same text.’”
What? It doesn’t matter what margin the scotus overturns it by, if they overturn it, it is as if it never existed. There’s no appeal. And we’ll get a stay on it very, very fast, and not by the scotus. Look if they manage to do the cram down, that’s not the time to give up.
I doubt either of those things will happen. Any backlash will be shortlived, and will be based on the content of the bill, not the procedures used to pass it. And there will be no constitutional crisis. I doubt a court will even try the case.
Nobody would support that. The military would NEVER support that.
2. Cause so much backlash that they can expect to see physical resistance, monetaty noncomplience, legal interference, and awful voter backlash for decades.
Let's hope the meltdown starts soon.
“(1) a bill containing its exact text was approved by a majority of the Members of the House of Representatives; (2) the Senate approved precisely the same text; and (3) that text was signed into law by the President. The Constitution explicitly requires that each of those three steps be taken before a bill may ‘become a law.’ Art. I, Section 7.
“If one paragraph of that text had been omitted at any one of those three stages, Public Law 105—33 would not have been validly enacted. [Emphasis added] If the Line Item Veto Act were valid, it would authorize the President to create a different law - one whose text was not voted on by either House of Congress or presented to the President for signature.
“Something that might be known as ‘Public Law 105—33 as modified by the President’ may or may not be desirable, but it is surely not a document that may ‘become a law’ pursuant to the procedures designed by the Framers of Article I, Section 7, of the Constitution.”
There. A direct ruling on procedure. Right there.
Doubt if you will. I seem to be leaning more and more that you are mistaken.
My concern is that some would give up until it passes, THEN try to institute a stay/appeal/overturn. THAT is a very bad plan. Don’t plan on an instant stay; remember that McCain-Feingold took _years_ to get even part overturned (and that was a relatively easy case).
Not sure what you mean by “we’ll get a stay ... not by the SCOTUS”. Get a stay via whom?
How do you know it was a cutie?
Self-immolation would be a nice gesture.
They still have to vote to “deem it passed”, so it’s not like they’re going to do it on a voice acclamation. It will still be clear who voted for it. This is just a way to a) give them a degree of separation from the vote, and 2) pass the desired “fixes” or amendments to it at the same time, which is another thing that’s unconstitutional.
It’s time for a DAY OF RAGE!
That’s an entirely different matter, as it is a controversy BETWEEN two branches of government. That is always a matter for judicial interpretation. This is merely a question of whether the house can pass a bill via a vote on a rule. It’s none of the courts business and they won’t get involved.
The majority of generals would - they’re politicians anyway.
The majority of actual footsoldiers no. That’s where it would get interesting.
What do you call the backlash we have been seeing since July?
Politicaly speaking, it's HISTORICAL, up there with Taxation Without Representation, Emancipation and Sufferage. In other words, what we are doing right now is extremely rare.
SCOTUS may not. However, I am starting to doubt your assertion due to the very grey area involved — and the precedent in the interpretation of the rules of the Constitution as it applies to process.
That's my point. The slaughter rule is new. But the backlash has been around for a while. The backlash has to do with the substance of the bill, not the process. The process won't add any further backlash because it will be all the same people that are pissed about both.
Well hopefully the rule will not pass and we’ll never find out.
Unbelievable.
The Constitution was intended to be easily understandable to the average citizen. Its intent is clear and unambiguous, yet because of the past number of decades of "interpretation" by leftist judges and "scholars" most people now believe that its meaning can only be divined by a "constitutional expert." This is a complete perversion of the Founders' intent.
Of course, the real reason that leftists are so intent on convincing people that the Constitution must be interpreted is that the plain meaning of the words it contains is poison to their anti-American agenda. The Constitution was intended to serve as "chains" to bind the federal government to our founding principles, as described by Thomas Jefferson. It was designed to thwart the plans of would-be tyrants, and to be very difficult to change. But the leftists would have us believe that it is really a "living document" that can be reinterpreted according to the whims of the time. These people are nothing less than enemies of America. They must be stopped at all costs. Were Jefferson, Madison, Adams, et al here with us today, I am certain they would be far less tolerant of this despicable behavior than we have been.
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