FROM BRIETBART'S BIG GOVERNMENT WEBSITE
HEADLINE UPDATES - MARCH 11, 2010
If Pelosi Has the Votes, Then Why Does the House Need the Slaughter Solution to Pass ObamaCare
by SusanAnne HillerHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi is bluffing here when she says:
“Yes,” Pelosi said when asked if she believed the House would end up having the votes to approve healthcare.
“If we took it up today, yes,” the speaker quickly added.
The speaker still cautioned, though, that the timing and actual vote count on the bill couldn’t be entirely set in stone until the final legislative language was finalized and until the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) delivers its score of the bill’s impact.
There is no chance Pelosi has the votes to pass ObamaCare and she knows it. If she did have the votes, she would have already had the vote and wouldn’t need the “Slaughter Solution.”
House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday. Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version. Slaughter has not taken the plan to Speaker Pelosi as Democrats await CBO scores on the corrections bill. “Once the CBO gives us the score we’ll spring right on it,” she said.
The Slaughter Solution has one very large obstacle–the Constitution Article I, Section 7–which states:
HEADLINE UPDATES - MARCH 10, 2010
1. ACORN ORGANIZER: FRAUD IN MILWAUKEE A 'VICTIMLESS CRIME'
2. PELOSI: WE NEED TO PASS HEALTH CARE BILL TO FIND OUT WHAT’S IN IT
3. RASMUSSEN: 81% BELIEVE HEALTH CARE REFORM WILL COST MORE THAN OFFICIAL ESTIMATES
Washington is abuzz these days with talk of “reconciliation” a word in our usual lexicon that suggests bringing people together. In this case, however, it is a larceny of language. It is divisive and not conciliatory and it is, understandably, creating anguish and outrage among those who understand the subterfuge at play here. Political mischief is about to run amok as this corruption of Senate rules becomes the strategic center piece President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress will utilize to ram their health care bill into law.
To be sure, the reconciliation process has been used a number of times during the past thirty years, usually without much angst or controversy. It has, essentially, been used in the past to remove legislative stumbling blocks to initiatives with fairly strong bi-partisan support. American tradition as well as old-fashioned common sense has generally dictated that consequential legislation enjoy broad bipartisan consensus and, in fact, the most ambitious reconciliation bills of the past have been, more often than not, popular on both sides of the aisle. In these cases, reconciliation was used for procedural reasons, not to force through a bill that couldn’t get 60 votes. It has, however, never been used to advance legislation that a substantial majority of Americans have said they do not want. Nor should it be.
It was one of the wisest and most respected of Democrats, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who warned his colleagues, “Never pass major legislation that affects most Americans without real bipartisan support. It opens the door to all kinds of political trouble.” It appears that the Administration and the congressional Democrats are, indeed, going to open the door to all kinds of political trouble. To paraphrase Professor Harold Hill who once bellowed in the musical comedy Music Man, “There’s trouble right (there) in River City”…the river now being the Potomac and the city being our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.
