WE lost . . . . . now what're we going to do about it.

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

If the democrats line up for health care, there's nothing we can do about it. The democrats will follow the "Slaughter" recommendation send the senate bill onto Obama who will sign it and then leave the country for a visit with foreigners.

What do we do AFTER Obama signs the "Slaughter" recommendation? Warn your legislators to chart a course of action or better yet "Nullification" for all 50 states against implementation of ANY health care coming out of Washington.

GOP Rules Chief Resigned to Letting Dems Make Obamacare the Law Without Actually Voting on It

Tuesday, March 16, 2010




By
Matt Cover, Staff Writer

Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.). (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)

(CNSNews.com) – 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.”
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.’”