The Slaughter House Lies

By Robert Romano

It has been called blatantly unconstitutional. Talk show host Mark Levin has declared it a “brazen and open violation of one of the most fundamental aspects of our Constitution.” House Republican Leader John Boehner on the floor of the House stated, “the Majority plans to force the toxic Senate bill through the House under some controversial trick.”

Which is about the size and shape of the “Slaughter House Rules.”

At controversy is a plan by Congresswoman Louise Slaughter to enact the Senate version of ObamaCare without actually voting upon the bill itself. House Leaders say the procedure is common, and that it has been used before. To be certain, it was used most recently to raise the national debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion to $14.294 trillion.

But bad behavior does not excuse more bad behavior. Because a violation of the Constitution, the law of the land, is repeated ad infinitum would not make it any less unconstitutional.

Writing for the American Spectator, Republican Congressman Thaddeus McCotter stated, “using the ‘Slaughter House Rules’ to skirt a substantive vote and ‘deem as passed’ the Senate's government-run health care bill would violate constitutionally prescribed procedures for duly passing and enacting federal legislation.”

He’s right. Article I, Section 7, Clause 2 states “Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become 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… 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.”

Levin said that “This clause goes to the heart of this Republic… to the heart of how our representative body, Congress, makes laws.” His case, and the case of the rule of law: for a bill to become law, both houses of Congress have to pass it with a recorded vote. Not a rule. Not a statement. A bill.

In this case, the House would vote on a rule providing for consideration of the reconciliation package. The rule shall “deem as passed” the Senate bill. Presumably, Obama would quickly sign the rule — it’s not a bill — so that the consideration of reconciliation on the House floor would bear some resemblance to the intent of reconciliation, which is to make minor budget fixes to existing law.

Only this will be no law. It will be a lie.

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