{"id":435091,"date":"2010-03-16T15:26:38","date_gmt":"2010-03-16T19:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.szone.us\/f95\/obamacare-slaughter-rule-without-precedent-40933\/"},"modified":"2010-03-16T15:26:38","modified_gmt":"2010-03-16T19:26:38","slug":"obamacare-slaughter-rule-is-without-precedent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/435091","title":{"rendered":"Obamacare Slaughter Rule is without Precedent"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>On 03.16.10 08:49 AM posted by Brian Darling<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) &lt;atitle=&quot;http:\/\/realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com\/2010\/03\/15\/pelosis-march-madness\/&quot; href=&quot;http:\/\/realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com\/2010\/03\/15\/pelosis-march-madness\/&quot;&gt;endorsed the rumored &lt;ahref=&quot;http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/03\/15\/the-slaughter-rule-yet-another-reason-obamacare-will-be-unconstitutional\/&quot;&gt;Slaughter Rule to send the Senate passed Obamacare bill to the President  without a direct up-or-down vote in the House. Don\u0092t believe those on the left  who are trying to argue that because Republicans used deeming resolutions when  they were in power, it is ok for Democrats to use a similar tactic  to pass legislation without a vote.<\/p>\n<p>Under this procedure, the House would vote  on a rule setting up debate.* The House would then skip a vote on the Senate  passed version of Obamacare and move directly to a vote on reconciliation  amendments to that Senate passed bill.* If reconciliation passes, then the House  will deem the Senate bill to have passed the House without a  direct vote.* As Michael McConnell wrote yesterday in the Wall Street Journal,  this is &lt;atitle=&quot;http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/03\/15\/the-slaughter-rule-yet-another-reason-obamacare-will-be-unconstitutional\/&quot; href=&quot;..\/2010\/03\/15\/the-slaughter-rule-yet-another-reason-obamacare-will-be-unconstitutional\/&quot;&gt;yet  another reason Obamacare would be unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>Pelosi &lt;atitle=&quot;http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/2010\/03\/16\/pelosi-plan-pass-health-care-traditional-vote-riles-critics\/&quot; href=&quot;http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/2010\/03\/16\/pelosi-plan-pass-health-care-traditional-vote-riles-critics\/&quot;&gt;explained the need for this procedure yesterday: &#8220;I like it, because people don&#8217;t have to vote on the Senate bill.\u0094* Many Democrats could vote for the rule and claim that they are against the Senate bill.<\/p>\n<p>A &lt;atitle=&quot;http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748703909804575123512773070080.html?u  tm_source=Newsletter&amp;utm_medium=Email&amp;utm_campaign  =Heritage%2BHotsheet#printMode&quot; href=&quot;http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748703909804575123512773070080.html?u  tm_source=Newsletter&amp;utm_medium=Email&amp;utm_campaign  =Heritage%2BHotsheet#printMode&quot;&gt;Wall  Street Journal Op Ed today, points out that this procedure is unprecedented  because never before has Congress passed a comprehensive reform bill using this  tactic:&lt;spanid=&quot;more-28957&quot;&gt;&lt;\/span&gt;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As Stanford law  professor Michael McConnell pointed out in these pages yesterday, &#8220;The Slaughter  solution attempts to allow the House to pass the Senate bill, plus a bill  amending it, with a single vote. 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.&#8221; If Congress can now decide that the House can vote for one  bill and the Senate can vote for another, and the final result can be some  arbitrary hybrid, then we have abandoned one of Madison&#8217;s core checks and balances.* Yes,  self-executing rules have been used in the past, but as the Congressional  Research Service put it in a 2006 paper, &#8220;Originally, this type of rule was used  to expedite House action in disposing of Senate amendments to House-passed  bills.&#8221; They&#8217;ve also been used for amendments such as to a 1998 bill that &#8220;would  have permitted the CIA to offer employees an early-out retirement program&#8221;\u0097but  never before to elide a vote on the entire fundamental  legislation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S.  Constitution states, \u0093Every Bill which shall have <b><i>passed the House of  Representatives<\/i><\/b> and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law,  be <b><i>presented to the  President of the United  States<\/i><\/b>.\u0094* If the House does not  have a direct vote on the legislation, this seems to be a violation of the  explicit language of the Constitution.<\/p>\n<p>Many on the left are relying on a &lt;atitle=&quot;http:\/\/www.rules.house.gov\/Archives\/98-710.pdf&quot; href=&quot;http:\/\/www.rules.house.gov\/Archives\/98-710.pdf&quot;&gt;Congressional Research  Service Report (CRS) for the proposition that the Slaughter Rule has been used on numerous occasions. According to CRS,  self-executing rules are a \u0093two for one\u0094 that describes \u0093when the  House adopts a rule it also simultaneously agrees to dispose of a separate  matter, which is specified in the rule itself. *For instance, self-executing  rules may stipulate that a discrete policy proposal is deemed to have passed the  House and been incorporated in the bill to be taken up.\u0094* Now many times this  has happened to incorporate amendments before a bill receives an up or down vote  or it can be used to get a bill to conference.<\/p>\n<p>The self-executing  rule can be used to deal with bills containing amendments added by the Senate.*  The CRS report cites a few examples of self-executing rules to \u0093enact significant  substantive and sometimes controversial propositions.\u0094* The first example CRS  identifies is that \u0093on August 2, 1989, the House adopted a rule (H.Res. 221) that  automatically incorporated into the text of the bill made in order for  consideration a provision that prohibited smoking on domestic airline flights of  two hours or less duration.\u0094* The legislation to prohibit smoking on domestic  flights was made part of another bill, then that other bill received a vote.*  This is very different, because the health care reconciliation measure will not  be incorporated into the Senate passed version of Obamacare and the  reconciliation measure will be sent to the Senate for separate consideration.<\/p>\n<p>Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and  other House leaders are readying the Slaughter Rule and the American people  should watch this process closely.* The left will try to say that because Republicans have done it in the past, then they can do the same.* The  Constitutional question is on the table and there is no direct precedent for the  House to pass a reconciliation measure which deems a massive health care bill to  have passed without a direct vote.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/03\/16\/obamacare-slaughter-rule-is-without-precedent\/\" >http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/03\/16\/&#8230;out-precedent\/<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 03.16.10 08:49 AM posted by Brian Darling Yesterday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) &lt;atitle=&quot;http:\/\/realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com\/2010\/03\/15\/pelosis-march-madness\/&quot; href=&quot;http:\/\/realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com\/2010\/03\/15\/pelosis-march-madness\/&quot;&gt;endorsed the rumored &lt;ahref=&quot;http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/03\/15\/the-slaughter-rule-yet-another-reason-obamacare-will-be-unconstitutional\/&quot;&gt;Slaughter Rule to send the Senate passed Obamacare bill to the President without a direct up-or-down vote in the House. Don\u0092t believe those on the left who are trying to argue that because Republicans used [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}