Guest Post by Michael McPadden
I think that it was in the fifth grade when I first learned that in order for a bill pass Congress, it had to be voted on by both houses before it was presented to the president to be signed into law. This seems like a pretty straightforward and simple system designed to make the process clear and understandable to all. Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution says, “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.”
Nancy Pelosi and the House leadership apparently think they’ve come up with a better idea. They intend to have the Senate’s version of the health care bill passed without a direct vote by the House of Representatives. The House will vote, not on the Senate health-care bill, but on its preferred changes to the Senate bill, yet in passing those changes it would “deem” the Senate bill to be passed.
In the normal process of having a bill pass through Congress, the House would first vote on and then pass a piece of legislation, and then the Senate would vote on and pass a similar piece of legislation. Representatives from both the House and the Senate would then convene to craft one single bill. This new single bill would be similar to but still different from either of the previous two bills. Because of the slight differences, a new vote in each house would be required to pass this new bill before it could be sent to the president’s desk.
This isn’t always an easy process, but that’s the point. To make sure a piece of legislation really has the support of the people, the Framers required that both chambers of Congress have to fully agree on it. Yet that is what the current House leadership is trying to avoid.
“Deeming” that the Senate bill has already passed the House without a direct vote is not just an abuse of the legislative process. It is a desperate act by a House leadership that is increasingly finding itself out of step with the public and even with its own rank and file. If this bill hadn’t been so unpopular with the American people, it would not have needed so many special deals and bribes in order to gain the votes of key senators.
The whole idea of the “deem and pass” maneuver is to allow House Democrats to say that they never really voted for the Senate bill, and that they just voted for the corrections. But don’t believe this ruse. Once the Senate bill is “deemed” to be passed, it will go on to the president to be signed into law—whether or not the House’s corrections are taken up by the Senate. So the House really is voting for the Senate bill, while trying to claim that they’re not voting for it.
At least John Kerry was for the bill before he was against it. These guys want to be for the bill and against it at the same time.
What chance does our republic have of surviving when our government leaders are not required to follow the simplest of provisions laid out in the Constitution?
There is a chance this vote will be slapped down by the Supreme Court. In a 1998 ruling, the court struck down the line item veto on the grounds that the Constitution requires both houses of Congress to pass an identical bill, the same issue is at stake here. But the Supreme Court is very reluctant to intrude into the procedural rules that Congress sets for itself, which is precisely why Congress must enforce those constitutional rules on itself.
But the Democrats seem to regard the Constitution as an irrelevant “obstruction.” As President Obama just put it in his interview with Fox News, he doesn’t “spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are.” This is a tacit admission that a government takeover of health care is more important to Democrats then upholding and defending the Constitution.
Members of Congress ought to be the first people to enforce the rules of the Constitution on themselves. Whether we’re on the left or on the right, we must never sacrifice the Constitution to achieve our political agenda—because preserving and defending the Constitution ought to be our agenda.
Mr. McPadden is an airline pilot and a candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress from Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District.
