House Democrats are seriously considering passing ObamaCare without actually voting on it. No joke. According to reports, Democrats are finally ready to abandon democracy altogether.
Democrats on the House Rules Committee are considering adopting a special rule that would allow the House to “deem” the Senate health-care bill to have been passed by the very act of voting on reconciliation fixes to it…
In this case, the Democrats would bring a “self-executing rule” to the floor that allowed for the adoption of the Senate bill when, and only when, the reconciliation sidecar is passed, thereby avoiding the need to bring the Senate bill to the floor for a separate up-or-down vote.
So ObamaCare would “pass” so the House can “fix” it, but Democrats would never cast a vote on the bill itself. It’s like saying “Let’s pretend we passed this horrifying, tax-raising, deal-laden pile of crap, and take the second vote FIRST!”
Why are Democrats so desperate? Having utterly mishandled the health care issue under the leadership of the Smartest President Ever® they just don’t have the votes. Michael Barone explains:
Are there enough votes in the House to pass the Senate's health-care bill? As of today, it's clear there aren't. House Democratic leaders have brushed aside White House calls to bring the bill forward by March 18, when President Barack Obama heads to Asia. Nevertheless, analysts close to the Democratic leadership tell me they're confident the leadership will find some way to squeeze out the 216 votes needed for a majority.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indeed shown mastery at amassing majorities. But it's hard to see how she'll do so on this one. The arithmetic as I see it doesn't add up.
Read Barone’s (as usual) outstanding analysis. Democrats can’t win, so they’re going to cheat. That’s the Natural Truth.
When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”… Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate.
