It is very rare that the various analysts on Politico.com seem to speak with one voice.
As for leading lambs to Slaughter, that’s Politico’s view — but one widely shared with political analysts of all stripes that find it hard to believe that the House leadership would contemplate using what they are now calling the ‘Slaughter rule’ — use of the ‘self-executing rule’ for reconciliation and “deemed” passage of the health care bill.
Here is a sampling of the thoughts of various political analysts over at Politico.com in the Arena section at http://www.politico.com/arena/
Out of fairness so that no one can claim that I am picking and choosing quotes, I have included remarks from ALL of Politico’s senior analysts.
Rick Beyer
Documentary filmmaker, author, history guy“Prediction: House Democrats will drop the Slaughter plan like a hot potato in the next 24 hours. And rightly so. Whether constitutional or not, I deem it a stupid idea.”
James P. Pinkerton Fellow
New America Foundation
“… concerns are now piling up about the constitutionality of the Slaughter Solution, giving yet more hope to opponents, and giving unwilling proponents yet another reason to stall a politically lethal “yes” vote. Unfortunately for House Democrats, their leadership has deemed it necessary for them to vote on a gimmick that sounds as bad as, or worse than, the ‘Cornhusker Kickback’.”
Mary Frances Berry
Professor of American Social Thought and History, U. Penn.“The health reform bill will be subject to court challenge in any case. Lawsuits are already in the offing in opposition to the individual mandate requirement. The key to the worry over a challenge to “deem and pass” is that there’s no open and shut case to be made on constitutionality.”
Alvin S. Felzenberg
Author, “The Leaders We Deserved”
“the Obama Administration and the Democratic congressional leadership, may be steering the ship right into a buzz-saw of judicial review, propitiating a constitutional crisis to boot. What will be next, a Rooseveltian-styled attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court? (A new fight over judicial nominations may well be looming in any event.) “Slaughter” is the perfect name for this Pelosi-inspired rule. It may leave no one standing in its wake.”
Kenneth E. Scott
Parsons Prof. of Law emeritus, Stanford Law School“”Passing” a bill without having to vote on it violates the most fundamental premise of representative government, and is contrary to the express provisions of Article 1 of the Constitution. It’s also a sign of how desperate Pelosi has become–anything goes, … It’s profoundly contemptible.”
David Boaz
Executive VP, Cato Institute
“… Article I, Section 7, of the Constitution requires that a bill must pass both houses of Congress to become a law. Duh. And for those who have trouble with that concept, he goes on: “As the Supreme Court wrote in Clinton v. City of New York (1998), a bill containing the ‘exact text’ must be approved by one house; the other house must approve ‘precisely the same text.’”
Mickey Edwards
Princeton lecturer and former Republican congressman“If President Obama were to sign into law a bill “passed” without a vote, without transparency, without accountability, he will never again be able to utter words like “openness” and “transparency” without incurring laughter.”
Bernard I. Finel
Senior Fellow, American Security Project
“The Roberts Court has shown itself to be perfectly willing to discard precedent in order to legislate a conservative agenda from the bench. In the face of demonstrated judicial activism by this court, it would indeed behoove to the Democrats to ensure that they have all their ducks in a row.”
Victor Kamber
Vice-President American Income Life Insurance“Democrats should be concerned. With this Supreme Court in place it really doesn’t matter what the law is, the politics of the court would decide and I’m afraid it would decide against the Democrats. Don’t do it.”
