Obama Backs No Vote Pass of healthcare reform

[festus]

Obama: 'Procedural' Spat Over Health Bill Vote Doesn't Worry Me
FOXNews.com - Obama: 'Procedural' Spat Over Health Bill Vote Doesn't Worry Me
FOXNews.com

President Obama is not worried about the "procedural" debate over whether House Democratic leaders should go ahead with a plan to approve health care reform without a traditional vote, he told Fox News on Wednesday.

President Obama is not worried -- and doesn't think Americans should worry -- about the "procedural" debate over whether House Democratic leaders should go ahead with a plan to approve health care reform without a traditional vote, he told Fox News on Wednesday.

The president, in an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier, responded for the first time to the controversy over a plan to use a parliamentary maneuver to allow the House to pass the Senate's health care bill without forcing members to vote for it directly.

The esoteric procedure has drawn fierce protest from Republicans, who say Democrats are trying to avoid accountability. But the president said there will be no doubt about where lawmakers stand on health care reform.

"I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are in the House or Senate," Obama said. "What I can tell you is that the vote that's taken in the House will be a vote for health care reform. And if people vote yes, whatever form that takes, that is going to be a vote for health care reform. And I don't think we should pretend otherwise. And if they don't, if they vote against it, then they're going to be voting against health care reform and they're going to be voting in favor of the status quo.

"So Washington gets very concerned with these procedures in Congress, whether Republicans are in charge or Democrats are in charge," he said.

Indeed, House lawmakers would be going on record for health care reform. But they wouldn't be casting a vote for the Senate bill alone.

Instead, under a process called a "self-executing rule," the House could simultaneously approve the Senate bill while voting on a package of changes to it. This would "deem" the Senate bill to be passed, without compelling members to vote for it directly.

Democratic leaders are considering the option because many House Democrats don't want to cast a vote in favor of the unaltered Senate bill, which they oppose for numerous reasons. But the House must pass the Senate bill in order to move on to the package of changes intended to correct all the things about it that they don't like.

The tactic would allow members to temporarily accept the Senate version while keeping it at arm's length.

Obama brushed off concerns about the special deals that helped get the Senate bill passed.

"By the time the vote has taken place, not only I will know what's in it, you'll know what's in it because it's going to be posted and everybody's going to be able to evaluate it on the merits," he said.

Obama said the the debate over the deals "ends up being a little frustrating is because the focus entirely is on Washington process."

Throughout the interview, the president repeatedly deflected questions about process.

Asked to respond to a viewer's e-mail question about why he has to "bribe Congress to pass it," Obama said, "I've got the same exact e-mails that I could show you that talk about why haven't we done something to make sure that I, a small business person, am getting as good a deal as members of Congress are getting, and don't have my insurance rates jacked up 40 percent?"

Obama later added, "I've got to say to you, there are a lot more people who are concerned about the fact that they may be losing their house or going bankrupt because of health care."

Obama expressed confidence that the health care bill will pass.

"And the reason I'm confident that it's going to pass is because it's the right thing to do," he said.

"And yes, I have said that this is an ugly process," he said. "It was ugly when Republicans were in charge. It was ugly when Democrats were in charge."

[festus]

Stephen Lynch calls health care vote plan ‘disingenuous’
Says procedural move would hurt Congress
Jay Fitzgerald By Jay Fitzgerald
Thursday, March 18, 2010 - Updated 4h ago
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Boston Herald General Economics Reporter
Jay Fitzgerald has been a journalist and blogger for years. He's now the general economics reporter for the Boston Herald.
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Stephen Lynch calls health care vote plan ‘disingenuous’ - BostonHerald.com
Even one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s floor whips, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, says a proposed parliamentary move to pass health-care reform would be “disingenuous” and harm the credibility of Congress.

In a sign of how tough it’s been for Pelosi to round up votes for the massive bill, Lynch - a South Boston Democrat who supported a House reform package last year - said he’ll probably vote against a key Senate version of the legislation, unless unexpected major changes are made soon.

Lynch, who serves as one of Pelosi’s key vote counters, said he also can’t support a proposed “deem and pass” procedure that would allow Democrats to vote to strip out controversial portions of the Senate bill and then “deem” that the entire package has passed without a second, direct vote.

“It’s disingenuous,” said Lynch, who considers unfair a Senate provision to tack a surcharge on higher-end health plans. “It would really call into question the credibility of the House.”

Other Democrats have countered that the “deem and pass” tactic has been employed before, including when Republicans were in the majority in Congress.

But Republicans yesterday were ripping into the plan.

[festus]

March 18 (Bloomberg) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may be creating new grounds for a court challenge to the proposed U.S. health-care overhaul as she considers using a mechanism that would avoid a vote on the full legislation.
Pelosi Tactic for Health-Care Vote Would Raise Legal Questions - Bloomberg.com
Pelosi said this week she might use a parliamentary technique that would “deem” House members to have passed the Senate’s health-care plan by voting for a more politically palatable package of changes.

Some legal scholars question whether that approach can be squared with the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s 1998 declaration that the two houses of Congress must approve “precisely the same text” before a bill can become a law.

“Any process that does not result in the House taking of yays and nays on statutory text identical to what passed the Senate is constitutionally problematic,” said Jonathan Adler, a professor who runs the Center for Business Law & Regulation at Case Western Reserve University’s law school in Cleveland.

The greatest obstacle to any challenge may be getting a court to consider the issue. In 2007, a federal appeals court in Washington rejected a similar attack on a Republican-backed package of tax and spending cuts, which because of a clerk’s error had passed the House and Senate with different wording.

The three-judge panel said that, under an 1892 Supreme Court decision, courts can’t second-guess congressional leaders when they certify that both houses have passed the same legislative language.

“I don’t think courts would be too quick to declare such a move unconstitutional,” Adler said. More likely, judges would declare the matter a “nonjusticiable political question,” he said.

Several Options

Pelosi said this week that the so-called pass-and-deem approach was one of several options Democrats are considering to win passage of the measure, potentially the biggest health-care change in four decades. Americans would be required to get insurance, and insurers would have to accept all customers.

The House would have to approve the $875 billion bill passed by the Senate and clear a set of changes to that measure through a budget process called reconciliation. The pass-and- deem technique would consolidate those two steps, forcing lawmakers to take a stance only on the changes.

The changes are needed because House Democrats object to parts of the Senate bill.

“There are a lot of people who don’t want to vote for it,” Pelosi said this week. “We will do what is necessary to pass a health-care bill.”

Democrats are trying to pass a bill over the unanimous opposition of Republicans as polls show public opinion against the legislation. The Senate also would have to pass the reconciliation bill.

Organization to Sue

The Landmark Legal Foundation, a Leesburg, Virginia-based organization that supports limited government, will sue to stop the health-care plan if the House uses the procedure, Mark R. Levin, president of the group, said on its Web site.

Pelosi said that when Republicans were in power, they used the pass-and-deem approach “hundreds of times.”

Supreme Court precedents nonetheless raise questions about the practice. In a 1983 case, the court said the federal government’s legislative power could be exercised only “in accord with a single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered, procedure.”

In that case, a 7-2 court invalidated a law that let a single house of Congress vote to overrule the attorney general and force deportation of an alien.

‘Finely Wrought’

The high court reiterated the “finely wrought” language in the 1998 ruling, a 6-3 decision that struck down a congressionally enacted line-item veto, which would have let the president eliminate individual spending provisions.

As part of the ruling, Justice John Paul Stevens said the Constitution “explicitly requires” that the House and Senate approve the exact same text.

The deem-and-pass approach would pass the high court’s test, says Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Irvine School of Law.

“So long as the same language passes both the House and the Senate,” it satisfies the constitutional requirements, said Chemerinsky, who unsuccessfully challenged the budget law that was at issue in the 2007 appeals court decision. “How is a matter of rules, and those are left for each house to decide.”

Michael W. McConnell, a Stanford law professor and former federal appeals court judge, disagreed, writing this week in the Wall Street Journal that the approach is unconstitutional.

Whether any court would reach that conclusion is a closer call, McConnell said in an e-mail. He said the 2007 appeals court’s conclusion that judges should defer to lawmakers on the issue was in tension with an earlier Supreme Court ruling.

There are “conflicting lines of authority,” McConnell said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: March 18, 2010 00:01 EDT

[JJFlash]

Hey, I'll take any help we can get to stop this unConstitutional monstrosity from passing but Lynch's claim that it "would harm the credibility of Congress" is laughable. Congress has no credibility.

[HK4U]

The Usurper has no respect for our Constitution. Why should he. He is no American but rather a foreign traitor. I have no respect for him.

[HardCorps53]

Interesting. In both cases you could replace parliamentary with paramilitary and not change the intent of what Pelosi is trying to do. This is an assault on the will of the people.

Even one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s floor whips, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, says a proposed parliamentary move to pass health-care reform would be “disingenuous” and harm the credibility of Congress.

Pelosi said this week she might use a parliamentary technique that would “deem” House members to have passed the Senate’s health-care plan by voting for a more politically palatable package of changes.

[fuhr52]

Trouble is the people are too stupid to know what is good for them. Polosi and her ilk are from the government, they are here to help, we are to trust them. NOT

[jreXD9]

Let's see.....Pres. YoMama is on record saying that legislation of this magnitude would need to pass with 60 votes.....then to a 50 +1 simple majority and now to no damn vote at all. Lying SOB.....I hope the 64 million idiots who voted for him are happy now. I've just about decided to vote in Nov for anyone without "INCUMBANT" under their name...

[father-of-three]

I watched the Fox interview. It scared me. Obama mentions the same talking points over and over and over. He even mentions talking points that we not brough up by Bret! What about the other 2450 pages of the bill? And then there was his cockiness in stating that the bill will get posted for all to see. Let's be realistic here. Short of calling in sick or using vacation time at the last minute, I don't have the time to read 2500+ pages!

He even made a statement at the end about how he is looking out for our (perceived) best interests. And the sheeple where I work....they think I am a hypocrite in opposing the bill because I have a rather expensive hospital bill in collections due to a reported pre-existing medical condition.

Socialism in the gateway drug!

[theicemanmpls]

What a mess.