Obama: Signing Bills NOT Voted by Both Houses

You wanted hope and change, Obama-style?

Here it is.



Transcript, posted on Mark Levin's site.

FRED LUCAS (CNSNews.com): Mark Levin with the Landmark Legal Foundation has prepared a suit against the President that if he signs the health care bill passed by the House without a recorded yea or nay vote required by Article I, Section 7 -- my question on that is, would the President rule out signing future bills such as immigration reform or finance reform you mentioned earlier that are not subject to a yea or nay vote in both chambers?

GIBBS: Again, this is -- I think we’ve discussed on a number of occasions, certainly the last time we met inside, that this was -- this is the type of thing that -- the type of rule that you’ve seen pass on any number of instances. So I understand that there are those that want to discuss this as being a unique thing. It is not. I stated earlier that when this bill passes the House the President will be happy to sign it.

CNS News: Well, is that still a constitutional argument in favor of it, that it’s been done before?

GIBBS: I’m unaware -- again, I didn’t go to law school -- I’m unaware that -- I’m unaware of legal suits filed by a similar organization when the Republicans did similar things on legislation.

CNS News: So the President wouldn’t rule out signing future bills that didn’t pass both houses by a yea or nay vote?

GIBBS: I’m not going to get into a series of legal hypotheticals that both of us seem unprepared to discuss.

Oh, my God.

This is too much.

The Dems really are going too far.

Here is Mark Levin's response to what Gibbs had to say and what the Democrats are doing:

MARK LEVIN: My initial reaction is that Gibbs' incoherence is an attempt to deceive. I have no doubt in my mind that the White House is working very closely with Pelosi and her lieutenants on this strategy of pretending they voted on an underlying bill when in fact they didn't vote on it. So that's why he is so deceitful.

And his boss yesterday, in an interview with FOX News' Bret Baier, made quite clear that he's well aware of what's going on on the Hill, even though he pretends he's not really in the weeds on it, and whatever comes to him, he's going to sign. So what we've learned from Bret Baier and you is that we have two branches of government that are absolutely committed to violating the Constitution in order to achieve an illegitimate end.

...

I know of no other time, despite the effort to muddy the waters with claims that this has been done scores of times, that Congress has blatantly said that we're going to pretend that we voted on a bill, then pretend that we've amended that bill, and send it to the president to sign. I'm unaware of any parallel case of that sort.

...

If the administrative rule that the House uses swallows the Constitution, that is a different matter entirely. This is why the White House and their defenders do not take a substantive, constitutional stand on this. They simply say, 'Well, the Republicans did this' or they'll say, 'Well, the courts aren't going to look at this.' But they will not defend it based on the language that is in the Constitution because they simply cannot.

...

What the Slaughter Rule does is undermine that fundamental principle (being a representative republic) completely. So a relatively small cabal of powerful political leaders can get together, come up with a scheme, and if the leaders of the Senate and the House and the president agree to it, completely subvert the Constitution. And that's what's going on here.

...

What we have in this case under these facts is a fundamental transgression, that is an attempt to, in essence, amend the Constitution without going through the amendment process. That gives enormous power to a handful of political leaders and also defies both the history and the clear wording of the Constitution. And the point is that's its purpose. It's purpose is to institutionalize a procedure that violates the Constitution, not simply to fix some technical error in a bill between the two bodies.

What we seem to have here is a bona fide constitutional crisis.