Posted by
Ike on Friday, March 19, 2010 5:19:09 PM
Not than anyone seems to care, aside from a few thousand people who post on the Internet, but much of what is done in the Congress appears to have been done in violation of one or another provision of our federal Constitution. No one cared very much about it in days gone by, when these various "procedural changes" were enacted. Now all of those chickens are coming home to roost and our tolerance for unconstitutional actions is - to mix a metaphor or two - turning around and biting us on our collective butts. Let's see what we've been seeing since October, 2008, in that area. And before you comment about how the Republicans voted for such changes and how the Republican "base" applauded those changes, I'm quite aware of those things. I was criticizing those RINO's before it was fashionable for those failings among others. Back to the salad days of "hope and change".
To begin with, we have all those folks who voted for all the various "stimulus" bills starting in November, 2008, without bothering to read the text of the bills. And many - some? most? - of those folks admitted to having done so in various ways: laughing; incredulous that we would notice or care; indignant that we would call them on it; just to name a few.
Next, we have the sight of a 1,200-page bill on "cap and trade" as a cure for the supposed global warming being amended by the addition of - what was it? 300? - about three hundred pages of amendment supposedly filed with the House at 3 a.m. of the day on which the final vote was to be taken. Did any of you read the amendment? How many pages did you count that contained words to the effect of, "We'll fill this in later"? Do any of you know what was "filled in later"? Given the mainstream media's devotion to government in general and President Obama in particular, how many other times in the last - oh, say - two administrations has that been done? Do you suppose that any of those 'midnight amendments' were ever read by the Congresscritters who voted in favor of those bills? How does that meet the Constitutional requirement that they consider and vote for the words of each particular bill? Not at all, in my useless opinion.
What is the next monster in the horror parade? Let me see ... I'll skip the lies about having ESPN broadcast the hearing, debate and voting on the health care reform and other pretenses of 'transparent government' ... How about the Senate committee voting on a bill that hadn't even been filed with the Senate? The committee chair simply had circulated a "written draft" of the bill among the Democratic members of the committee - and maybe to the Republicans also, who knows? - and then had a vote on it, after various delays for backing and filling and the usual lies by the usual suspects. That is the very "health care reform" bill that is now pending amendment in a House-Senate conference committee in accordance with literally centuries of tradition, practice and the rules of the House and Senate - NOT! What happened is that President Obama - represented by various aides, flunkies and his chief of staff - met with the Speaker of the House and her staffers and Senator Reid and his accomplices in private, off-the-record, meeetings, with input from time to time by lobbyists and other representatives of some labor unions - SEIU, anyone? - pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies, other interested people in government ... .notice what isn't happening? Open, publically-held, recorded discussion and debate about how to amend the two conflicting bills. Why do you suppose that was? Because it was no longer possible to pass anything through the Senate, once Senator Kennedy died and his successor - a nominal Republican no less who was on the record as opposing the bill - was seated. Oooops!
That leads us to the next part of the horror show, 'reconciliation' plus 'pass and deem'. The reconciliation process was added to the Senate rules in order to simply reconciling different versions of budget bills in the Senate. Remember that tax and spending legislation is required to originate in the House, be passed, then sent to the Senate which may amend it. Unlike the House, the Senate has several committees with direct authority over such bills and quite often different versions of the House bill - different because they had been amended differently in these various committees - would emerge onto the Senate floor for debate, discussion and vote. To reduce what had sometimes been utter paralysis of the budget process in the Senate to an easier method - procedurally, you see? - the Senate amended its rules after full and complete discussion to allow an up-and-down vote on the various amendments without permitting a fillibuster. To satisfy the traditionalists, each Senator was allowed 20 minutes to speak on the amended bills, but no more "unlimited discussion", no more cloture votes which require a super-majority of 60. Only on budget bills with conflicting amendments. Unfortunately, the amended rule doesn't say "only on budget bills with conflicting amendments". But, those are the only instances of reconciliation being used. It is called "reconciliation"; to reconcile budget matters. Ah, but, in order to pass the health care bill - which is unconstitutional on its face, being utterly unmentioned as something within Congress' law-making powers - and thereby avoid a disasterous loss of prestige on the part of the President and his overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, Senator Reid threatened to use it to pass the House bill in the Senate. Wasn't required then, but is now because the Democrats in the Senate only have 59 votes they can count on and the Republicans in the Senate - yes, even the RINO's like Senator Olivia - recognize that they will be replaced in the fall elections if they vote with the Dems on this.
Which introduce us to our final monstrosity, "pass and deem" - or as some wit labelled it, "DemonPass". This rule - so-called "Slaughter" Rule, after the chairperson of the House Rules Committee Rep. Slaughter - the members of the House will vote for another, different, bill and by passing that bill will be "deemed" to have passed the Senate version of a health care bill. I won't comment more on that, other than to mention that two states have already directed their Attorneys-General to sue the President (or someone) in Federal Court for a judgement declaring that use of the Slaughter Rule is unconstitutional. As have at least three private organizations and there is one with a draft petition already posted on the Internet. Sorry, but I forget which organization it is.
There you have the "Collection of Absurdities" leading from the end of the Bush Administration through to the present days of the Obama Administration. Silly to think that any of those actions might be taken as wrong, isn't it? Let alone that most of them are utterly contrary to the spirit and the letter of our Constitution. If you think that is absurd, consider this prospect, as a hypothetical: suppose that President Obama leaves the country immediately after the vote in the House is held - the "DemonPass" vote - and stays gone until ten days have expired. Effect? Read the Constitution. The bill becomes law just as if he had signed it. Now suppose further that all the lawsuits against this law are thrown out of court on the spurious basis that the courts have to defer to the acts of the Congress, no matter how blatantly unconstitutional they are. How many people will take a more active role in resisting the enforcement of the new law? Several states have already considered what amount to "nullification" laws, declaring that it will not be enforced within their boundaries. Not good, from the standpoint of "domestic tranquility"; is it? How much more tranquil would the nation be, knowing that the Republican candidates for the House and the Senate on the ballot for November's elections have sworn their most solemn oaths that their first order of business will be to repeal this law? Think about it, Republicans.