The aptly named "Slaughter Solution" may well be the final peal of the death knell to the Rule of Law that established our Nation as a Republic under the Constitution. First the Senate has found a way to pass this "Health Care" bill by fiat, instead of by Vote. And now the House has found a way to join them in supplanting Democracy with rule by fiat.
First off, when the House of Representatives passed H. R. 3590 known colloquially as the Senate Health Plan and officially short-titled "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act", it was actually titled "An Act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees, and for other purposes." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid caused the House bill to be gutted and replaced entirely with text of his own. This was done in order to bypass the inherent difficulties and Constitutional protections provided if the Senate were to have passed their own, separate bill. The only thing H. R. 3590 as passed by the House and H. R. 3590 as passed by the Senate have in common is the designation H. R. 3590!
What happened to the bill that the House passed and sent to the Senate concerning health care, you may ask? The House did pass a version of health care reform after all, it was H.R. 3962, the "Affordable Health Care for America Act". It, H. R. 3962, is sitting "on the Senate Legislative calendar", forgotten, and quietly waiting to die a peaceful death at the end of the session.
Now, having written his new bill in an old bill's clothing, Senator Reid and President Obama convinced the Democrats in the Senate into standing in lockstep and passing this travesty through a rare (and fortunately short lived) party-line super majority vote. In order to accomplish this task (getting 60 Senators to agree on anything, no matter their party, is difficult) Senator Reid had to resort to the typical base tactic (used unabashedly by both parties) of brib... er, ah ear marks. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for Americans, the Constitution required that the House vote on any and all changes made. I say required because the latest machinations of the House leadership appears to be an attempt to bypass the very heart of the Constitution itself.
The Constitution of the United States of America, Article 1, Section 7 reads in part; "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."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was stuck in a real quandary. It wasn't the fact that the bill was swapped out wholesale from the original, that's normal accepted procedure in Washington, but that the coalition of Democratic Representatives in Congress was able to read the proverbial "writing on the wall". Being politicians first, some had realized that their cushy two-year-at-a-time stints were on the line if they agreed to the current Senate bill, full of bri... er, kick-ba.., ah unpopular mono-state funding initiatives. All but a couple of the hardest headed liberals had finally surrendered on the so-called "public option" for the time being, but some of the more "moderate" members from conservative areas were concerned enough about public sentiment over abortion and those ear marks that they were unwilling to commit to vote "Yea" again. Despite another round of brib... ear marking, the numbers just didn't add up. What she needed was a rules fix, like the Senate had offered.
In the Senate, they recognized that their wholesale re-writing of the Health Care bill would be a hard pill for the House to swallow, so Senator Reid, with his fingers crossed behind his back, promised that the Senate would "fix" the bill, if only the House would pass it and the President sign it first. The President, likewise with his fingers crossed behind his back said, "Yeah, what he said!" Well, being politicians themselves, the House Democrats recognized a snow job when offered one and declined. Even Speaker Pelosi winced when trying to sell that whopper. But Senator Reid produced a surprise claiming that the special rules for "Budget Reconciliation" could be use to fix (most) of the "problems". The Republicans could whine about it, but they had neither the will nor enough of a cache of public trust to do anything substantive about it.
Reconciliation looked to be the answer, it at least afforded a modicum of political cover for most of the concerned "moderates". The only stickler remaining was the anti-abortion democrats. Enough of these members figured out all by themselves (through the aid of copious amounts of mail from constituents) that reconciliation could not fix the non-budgetary rules problems created by the Senate bill concerning abortion.
It struck Speaker Pelosi, that if the arcane rules of the Senate could provide for part of the solution, then surely the arcane rules of the House could provide for the rest! So, she called upon House Rules Committee Chairman Louise Slaughter to save her political bacon. Representative Slaughter, after some time of virtual rules bending finally came up with an idea.
The "Slaughter Solution" as it has lovingly been called, is simplicity (or is that duplicity?) itself. Basically, the House Rules committee would produce a "rule" which would deem the bill, H.R. 3590 (Senate hi-jacked health care bill) as passed without without! it ever having been voted on by the members of the House of Representatives; Article 1 Section 7 be damned.
Sure, the members of the House of Representatives(!) would have to vote "yea or nay" for the rule. But they could flatly and truthfully claim that they never voted for this unpopular bill, even if they vote "yea" on this rule. Is this thin political fig leaf worth the damage to the Constitution; to the Rule of Law in the United States of America? It apparently is worth it to President Obama, Senator Reid, and Speaker Pelosi.
The $64 trillion question is, Why?
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