Bond blasts House plan for health-care bill as 'scheme and deem'
Kit Bond says the method that Democrats plan to use to pass health-care reform should be called the "scheme-and-deem loophole."
Missouri's senior Republican senator said in a statement released Thursday that the so-called "self-executing rule" is aptly named because it would ignore the will of voters and "jam a government takeover of health care through Congress."
"Right now, generations of kids who grew up learning about our nation's law-making process from School House Rock are scratching their heads," Bond said. "You see, most Americans think before a bill becomes a law, both the House and Senate must vote on it. But the House Democrats have found a loophole to our constitution -- a procedure invented to add technical corrections to legislation."
The "deem and pass" procedure that Bond and others have blasted is explained this way by the Washington Post:
"Rather than passing the Senate bill and then passing the fixes, the House will pass the fixes under a rule that says the House 'deems' the Senate bill passed after the House passes the fixes."
Will it work? Now that the Congressional Budget Office has released its estimates of what the bill will cost -- $940 billion over 10 years -- House leaders are looking for a vote as early as Sunday.
