Some Democrats have evidently bought into David Axelrod’s assurance that the American people “don’t care” about the process of making law. In defending the so-called Slaughter Rule – an unconstitutional and unprecedented vote-avoidance scheme — several prominent Democrats have insisted that there’s really no need for the House to actually vote on the Senate bill for it to become law.
Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) told ABC News:
“I don’t need to see my colleagues vote for the Senate bill in the House. We don’t like the Senate bill. Why should we be forced to do that?”
Yes, why on earth should the lower chamber be required to vote on legislation before it is enacted? After all, they don’t like it. Who or what could possibly “force” them to endure such a cumbersome (and antiquated, really) ritual?
Majority Whip James Clyborn (D-SC) offered his own nuanced interpretation of the bill-becomes-law journey on Fox News yesterday (skip to the 3:00 mark):
Note his response to Jon Scott’s question:
Scott: “If Speaker Pelosi deems that the bill has passed, there wouldn’t be a vote, would there?”
Clyburn: “There’s been a vote in the Senate! They got 60 votes for this. What will be deeming is that those 60 votes that the people got, we will say on the House side, we deem that as having been passed.”
Silly news anchor! There has been a vote. In the Senate. So, naturally, they can just deem that vote to have been passed somewhere else, too. Again, why are people having such a hard time with this simple legislative permutation?
Rules and founding documents can be such buzzkills, dude.