Democrats aren’t suicidal. They’re self-executing

Those words were spoken by Rep. David Dreier, the ranking Republican on the House Rules Committee, and they were true. As the House Democratic leadership struggled to come up with a procedural shortcut to pass the unpopular national health care proposal, they scheduled the House floor to discuss the “Harmful Algal Blooms and Hypoxia Research and Control Amendments Act of 2010.”  However important algal blooms and hypoxia research might be, Dreier was pointing out that the water bill was simply cover, something for the House to do while, the powers in the Democratic party devised a plan to push the Obamacare bill through the House without Democrats having to take a public, roll-call vote on the measure.

As Dreier spoke, Democrats were refining plans to use something called a “self-executing rule” to pass the bill approved by the Senate last December 24 on a party-line vote.  The House must pass that bill, as is, for Obamacare to become law.  But since the bill contains the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, Gator Aid, and other special deals, House Democrats are wary — no, terrified — of voting for it, even if they pass a separate bill “fixing” the Senate bill’s problems.  That’s where the self-executing rule — sometimes called the “Slaughter solution” or the “Slaughter sleight-of-hand,” after House Rules Committee chairwoman Louise Slaughter — comes in.

Whenever a bill goes to the house floor for debate and a vote, the Rules Committee is required to write, and the House must pass, a rule setting the terms of debate: how many amendments will be offered, how long debate will run, etc.  The rule is normally a limited measure that applies only to the particular bill in question.  And it covers only the process; the bill itself is passed separately.  But it is possible for the Rules Committee to put in language stipulating that if the rule is passed, then a separate, unconnected piece of legislation will also be considered, or “deemed,” to have passed.  “It embodies a ‘two-for-one’ procedure,” says a 2006 Congressional Research Service report on self-executing rules.  “This means that when the House adopts a rule it also simultaneously agrees to dispose of a separate matter, which is specified in the rule itself.”

Using the self-executing rule strategy, Democrats could conceivably pass the rule, the Senate bill, and the House reconciliation “fixes” to the Senate bill all in one vote, without a single House member voting for any specific health care measure.

“Nothing of this magnitude has ever been done with a self-executing rule,” says Dreier, who served as chairman of the Rules Committee when Republicans held the majority.  Dreier is correct; there has never been an occasion when a bill of such national importance and scope has been slipped through the House with such a maneuver.  But bills have been passed using self-executing rules.  In the past, such rules were used to pass small, technical changes in legislation.  But the 2006 Congressional Research Service report says self-executing rules have also been used in cases of more substantive bills.  From the report:

• On August 2, 1989, the House adopted a rule (H.Res. 221) that automatically incorporated into the text of the bill made in order for consideration a provision that prohibited smoking on domestic airline flights of two hours or less duration.

• On March 19, 1996, the House adopted a rule (H.Res. 384) that incorporated a voluntary employee verification program — addressing the employment of illegal immigrants — into a committee substitute made in order as original text.
• H.Res. 239, agreed to on September 24, 1997, automatically incorporated into the base bill a provision to block the use of statistical sampling for the 2000 census until federal courts had an opportunity to rule on its constitutionality.
• A closed rule (H.Res. 303) on an IRS reform bill provided for automatic adoption of four amendments to the committee substitute made in order as original text. The rule was adopted on November 5, 1997, with bipartisan support.
• On May 7, 1998, an intelligence authorization bill was made in order by H.Res. 420. This self-executing rule dropped a section from the intelligence measure that would have permitted the CIA to offer their employees an early-out retirement program.
•  On February 20, 2005, the House adopted H.Res. 75, which provided that a manager’s amendment dealing with mmigration issues shall be considered as adopted in the House and in the Committee of the Whole and the bill (H.R. 418), as amended, shall be considered as the original bill for purposes of amendment.

So self-executing rules have been used in the past.  But would any of those examples strike a fair-minded observer as precedent for using a self-executing rule to pass Obamacare? 

The bottom line is, Republicans are on solid ground when they say Democrats are considering an unprecedented maneuver to pass their health care bill.  And for what purpose?  Do Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer believe voters won’t figure out who voted for Obamacare and who didn’t? That Republicans will ease their opposition because the final vote was for a rule, and not the specific bill itself?  Do they think that anyone won’t get the message?

Republicans have often remarked that Democrats seem suicidal in their drive to pass a bill that most Americans oppose.  Passing it with a self-executing rule will likely just make things worse.