“Slaughter’s Solution” — Health Bill Procedure Ready To Go

Should the House pass the Sen­ate bill first? Can the Sen­ate take up changes to an unpassed bill? Accord­ing to House Rules Chair Louise Slaugh­ter, the ques­tion is moot:

Slaugh­ter is weigh­ing prepar­ing a rule that would con­sider the Sen­ate bill passed once the House approves a cor­rec­tions bill that would make changes to the Sen­ate version.

Repub­li­cans are already attack­ing the tac­tic, call­ing it a “‘Slaugh­ter Solu­tion’ to Ram Unpop­u­lar Health Care Takeover Through Con­gress With­out a Vote.” Of course, they neglect to men­tion that it will in fact require a vote.

That a bill can be passed by a rule con­tin­gent on another vote is no news either; the House implic­itly passes debt-​​limit leg­is­la­tion every year by rule when the bud­get res­o­lu­tion is approved: the “Gephardt rule.” Like that, Slaughter’s Solu­tion is a bril­liant solu­tion to what has been an extra­or­di­nar­ily dif­fi­cult pro­ce­dural puz­zle — and it should wrap up the process even sooner than expected.

11 March 2010 – 3:04 am | By Benjamin Daniels | Posted in Health Care | Tagged , | Comments (307)