SLAUGHTER SOLUTION SLAUGHTERS REALITY

Unbelievable, even for this congress. The current impasse on the Obamacare monstrosity involves the requirement that the House pass the Senate Bill as it is currently written so that the Senate can then pass with the "Byrd Rule" or Reconciliation. The House is balking due to the abortion language - the Senate Bill has verbiage that would allow taxpayer-funded abortion.

What to do, what to do? Enter Louise Slaughter and her "Slaughter Solution". Via the Washington Examiner, the National Journal reports:

House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday.

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.

Just to clarify, in order for the Slaughter Solution to be used, the House will have to consider the Senate Bill as "passed" even though the only way for that to be possible would be if the House passes it, which it does not have the votes to do. This is all beyond surreal.

Not only is the notion that the spirit of the Byrd rule is a source of much controversy, which should make it the Democrats' last option but because they're even having difficulty going that route, the head of their Rules committee in the House is literally proposing a rule that would necessarily require this law to be passed by sending it through an alternate reality.

Again, Democrat Robert Byrd in 2001 recounting his conversation with Bill Clinton in 1993 in which an adamant Byrd apparently told Clinton that using Reconciliation to pass health care was unequivocally NOT in the spirit of his Rule.



h/t to Free Republic