TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Law Professor and Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center Michael W. McConnell argues “deem and pass” is unconstitutional:

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D., N.Y.), chair of the House Rules Committee and prime mover behind this approach, has released a letter from Yale Law School’s Jack Balkin asserting that a “rule which consolidates a vote on a bill and accompanying amendments, or, as in this case, a reconciliation measure and an amended bill, is within the House’s powers under Article I, Section 5, Clause 2.”

But that does not actually address the point at issue. No one doubts that the House can consolidate two bills in a single measure; the question is whether, having done so, it may then hive the resulting bill into two parts, treating one part as an enrolled bill ready for presidential signature and the other part as a House bill ready for senatorial consideration. That seems inconsistent with the principle that the president may sign only bills in the exact form that they have passed both houses. A combination of two bills is not in “the same form” as either bill separately.

Whether it’s constitutional or not, the tactic is terribly dishonest. The Democrats are, by using this rule, trying to pass the largest entitlement bill since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society without having technically voted on the bill itself, so they can claim to their constituents they didn’t vote for the Senate bill. Democrats don’t believe in their own legislation enough to vote for it outright. Only someone with no integrity whatsoever, who truly believes that ends justify the means, would support something like this.

Words cannot describe how cynical and dishonest this is. This is the pinnacle of corruption.