THE SLAUGHTER SOLUTION

Posted By on March 12th, 2010

http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2010/03/12/the-slaughter-solution-and-other-acts-of-desperation/
The Slaughter Solution and Other Acts of Desperation
Posted By Roger Kimball

Is it “end-game” time in the debate over what to do with American health care? The other day, some industrious blogger—it might have been The Drudge Report—posted an amusing list of headlines from the past year or so, each announcing that, at long last, we’d reached the “end game” in the debate over health. Just yesterday, President Obama said again that “the time to talk” was over: the time to vote had come.

He didn’t really mean that, of course, because were a vote taken now, his plan to have the government usurp a sixth of the U.S. economy and institute top-down socialized medicine in the Unite States would fail.

As a result, Team Obama has been exerting the old cerebellum to discover some way of passing the Democrats’ health care bill without, you know, precisely passing it. Even if you question their ethics, you have to admire their ingenuity. Last month it was “reconciliation”: that administrative tool was all the rage. A technique used to patch over budgetary anomalies was going to be hauled in to revolutionize a major social program that had no bipartisan support whatsoever.

That wasn’t going down with the public too well. So although reconciliation is still on the table (or, rather, up the Reid-Pelosi sleeve) the latest wheeze is “The Slaughter Solution,” named for Rep. Louise Slaughter (NY, “D,” of course). Would you like to enact some legislation without the inconvenience (to say noting of the accountability) of actually voting for it? The Washington Examiner [1] explains how you can do it:

In the Slaughter Solution, the rule would declare that the House “deems” the Senate version of Obamacare to have been passed by the House. House members would still have to vote on whether to accept the rule, but they would then be able to say they only voted for a rule, not for the bill itself.

George Orwell, wouldst that you were here to witness this!

“Would that rationale fly with the public?” asks the Examiner. “Is it logical? Of course not. But remember, these folks have persuaded themselves that a majority of the American people really want Obamacare.”

Except, of course, that they don’t: as of last week 53 percent oppose the plan [2].

What we are seeing now may or may not be the end game in the debate over health care. There can be no doubt, however, that we are seeing an effort to make an end run—an end run around democracy and accountability. Obama and his mandarins think they know what’s best for you. Therefore, although they are willing to pay lip service to democracy, they are perfectly willing to subvert it if it suits their purposes.

Fortunately, more and more people are cottoning on to the statist assault on freedom that stands at the center of Obama’s effort to (as he put it just before the election) “fundamentally transform the Untied States of America.” One relative newcomer I’d like to introduce to my readers is the American Future Fund [3], a conservative, free-market organization that has been doing yeoman’s service educating the public about the Obama administration’s assaults on economic liberty and democratic accountability. Don’t miss their their latest ad [4] on the hypocrisy of Democratic efforts to shut down debate on health care reform:

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