Democrats in Washington eager to pass health care reform legislation are taking the country down a dangerous path.
House Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, may not have the votes needed to pass the Senate's version of the reform bill. So Pelosi and her leadership team are considering action that would "deem" the reform bill passed without ever actually holding a vote on it.
Doing so would raise serious questions about the legitimacy of the reform legislation. And it presents the nation with a constitutional crisis: If major new laws can be enacted without our representatives ever voting on them, can we still claim to be living in a democratic republic?
Our Constitution requires that for a bill to become law, it must be approved by both the House and Senate before moving to the president for his signature. Typically, each chamber passes its own version of legislation, then representatives of each body meet in a conference committee to hash out a compromise bill. That compromise bill is then approved by both houses and signed into law.
The House and Senate each passed their own health care reform measures. But the election of Republican Scott Brown to the Senate made it virtually certain that the Senate would not have the 60 votes needed to break a GOP filibuster on any compromise bill.
In response, the Democrats opted for a process called "reconciliation" under which the House would approve the Senate bill as written, with the promise that the Senate would amend the bill to satisfy the objections raised in the House. That process would require only a simple majority of 51 votes in the Senate.
But the Senate bill, which includes funding for abortion and lacks a government-run insurance option, is so distasteful to some Democrats that House leaders fear they cannot muster a majority to pass it.
So the Democrats are now considering a special process called a "self-executing rule." This would allow Democrats to vote on the rule and a package of amendments to the Senate bill, and in doing so, "deem" that the Senate bill had been passed.
The scheme provides a modicum of political cover to skittish Democrats, who could then claim they had never voted for the objectionable Senate bill, only for the amendments to it.
This process has been used before, when both parties have held the majority. Usually, it serves to hurry along amendments and other minor changes to legislation. It has never been used for something as momentous and game-changing as the health care reform bill.
Our local Democratic representatives are perfectly willing to go along with this sham of democracy. Our four local representatives in Congress — Democrats John Tierney and Niki Tsongas of Massachusetts, Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes of New Hampshire — voted yesterday to block a Republican attempt to force an up-or-down vote on the Senate bill.
Asked if the so-called "deem-and-pass" method is a legitimate means of passing health care reform, most argued that the "process" of passing reform is not important. What matters is the promised wonderful end result.
"At the end of the day, we will be voting on health reform and potentially the largest debt reduction — $1 trillion — for quite some time, if not ever," Tierney said in a statement. "People are getting — finally — a vote on health insurance reform."
"When it comes time to vote, the vote will be on whether or not we pass real health care reform, and all of us will be on record, as we should be," Shea-Porter said in a statement.
"Paul is focused on the substance of health insurance reform, and I hope you're able to include it in addition to just the process," said Aaron Rottenstein, spokesman for Hodes.
Tsongas said the deem-and-pass process has been used many times in the past and she is comfortable with it. It will still put members of Congress on record on health care reform.
"If that is how it is presented to us you will certainly know where I stand," she said.
Process doesn't matter, our representatives say. Then what of our Constitution, which is nothing but a document outlining the process of how our democratic republic must work?
Process doesn't matter, not when something as important as health care reform is at stake, they say. If health care reform is so important, then let our representatives vote directly on it. If health care reform cannot muster a majority of votes, it has no business becoming law.
Claiming that process doesn't matter is just another way of saying the end justifies the means.
