Pelosi may try to pass health care without a vote

Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, currently unable to round up enough Democratic votes to pass the health care reform bill on to the next step of the legislative process, has indicated she may try to pass the measure without a vote.

The procedure, which strangely is performed without the aid of convex mirrors, is nevertheless a procedural trick called a “self-executing rule” or “deem and pass.”

The upshot is that Pelosi would package a popular set of fixes to the Senate bill – a vote only on those changes – and then “deem” the whole package to be passed by the House. While the procedure has been used in the past, it has never been utilized on such a major, economy-shifting piece of legislation.

Of course, even those popular fixes would not be guaranteed to receive passage into law, as the whole mess can still be messed with in other processes both before and after final passage by President Obama, who has staked so much of his presidency on this thing that at the moment, he’d sign a bill approving the cloning of Adolph Hitler if it meant passing something called “health care reform.”

Most. Corrupt. Congress. Ever.