GOP's Take on 'Deem and Pass' Is Sheer Hypocrisy

Hey, Wall Street Journal editorial board and other Republican “acolytes” and apologists: There is nothing remotely novel or “unconstitutional” about House Democrats using “deem and pass” to push through health care legislation, writes Norman J. Ornstein. You’ve already achieved “a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation,” and now this? The GOP used the rule at least 35 times the last time they were in control.

Ornstein is no fan of the self-executing rule, he writes at the American, but he likes “hypocrisy” even less. Republicans went to court to defend their use of it, and won. Former Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier “used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration.” Yet now, there is a “level of feigned indignation” that Ornstein has never seen before. “Is there no shame anymore?”