The demise of deem and pass

Fox News:

House Democrats on Saturday decided against using a controversial tactic to pass the Senate's version of the health care bill without an actual vote.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD., said he believes Democrats have enough votes to pass the legislation.

The decision capped an ongoing discussion on whether to use a so-called "deem and pass" strategy that would allow House members to approve the Senate version of health care bill without an actual vote before taking up a second "fix-it" resolution, known as reconciliation.

The stage is now set for three big votes on Sunday: the first to bring the "fix-it" bill to the House floor. The second on the bill. Then the final vote would be on the Senate bill itself.

If the final bill passes the House, the Senate plans to take it up next week.

Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., cheered the decision by Democrats to abandon "deem and pass,"calling it a sign that Democrats are buckling under pressure.

"In the words of Ronald Reagan, 'they may not have seen the light, but they certainly felt the heat," he said in a written statement.

Dreier called on Democrats to "abandon this entire process and start over, working with Republicans in a bipartisan way to achieve real health care reform."

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They dropped it because there were several serious challenges to the process as being unconstitutional, as set forth in some of the post below. If that happened the buzz after the legislation is passed would be about the challenge and the process and not about the bill the Democrats want to brag about. It was also clear that the process would give no political cover to the Democrats. It would not surprise me if Obama told them to drop it because it was becoming a distraction. He probably came to that conclusion after being questioned about by Fox News.