Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Democrats Were Against the Slaughter Rule...Before They Were For It

Gotta love this:

Dial the date selector back to 2005 when the Republican majority in Congress approved a national debt limit increase using a self-executing rule similar to the Slaughter Solution.

Guess who went to federal court to challenge the constitutionality of the move? The Ralph Nader-backed Public Citizen legal activists...

It's important to be clear that the issue before the court was whether a minor text correction was sufficient to satisfy the constitutional requirement that both chambers of Congress must pass the exact same bill. In this 2005 case, the court ruled the minor correction was acceptable.

The deeming of an entire bill to have been passed without a prior recorded vote goes far beyond a minor text correction, so the constitutional principle clearly would be violated by the Slaughter Solution.

And now for the kicker, guess who joined Public Citizen in that suit with amicus briefs:

Nancy Pelosi

Henry Waxman

Louise Slaughter

Deficit increases are different from taking over 1/6 of the economy.