“Deemin’-cratic” House whip declares that bills do not have to pass both Houses of Congress in order to become law

A couple of minutes into this clip, a Fox News host whose name I didn’t get, but who deserves much credit for his persistence, asks James Clyburn, the House Democratic whip, how he can justify the Democrats’ possible move to “deem” the Senate bill as passed rather than having a vote on it. Clyburn answers evasively a couple of times, saying that they are going to vote on the bill. The Fox newsman says to him, “But if Speaker Pelosi deems the vote as having been passed, then there wouldn’t be a vote, would there?”

Clyburn then gives this amazing response, which I’ve transcribed (it begins at just over three minutes into the clip):

There’s been a vote in the Senate, they got 60 votes for this. What we will be deemin’ is that those 60 votes that the people got, we will say on the House side we deem that as having been passed. So they got the 60 votes. We got 220 for our bill in the House. The only thing we will be voting on now is the thing we call the fixes, the reconciliation. And so that’s the part we will be votin’ on. What we will be deemin’, already got 60 votes.

As staggering as this is, Clyburn seems to be saying that the bill doesn’t have to be voted on in the House to become law, if it’s already been voted on in the Senate. If the Senate passes a bill, and the House “deems” that bill as having been passed, purely on the basis of the Senate’s vote for the bill, then it’s been passed. Did you know that the U.S. Congress was a unicameral legislature? That’s what Rep. Clyburn is telling us.

First the Democrats morphed into Demoncrats, and now they’ve become Deemin’-crats.

- end of initial entry -

March 17

Charles T. writes:

Government by decree. Man, are we in for a ride.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 17, 2010 12:59 AM | Send