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This guy, Michael McConell, says the so-called 'Slaughter Rule' is unconstituional. He's a former federal judge.

Enter the Slaughter solution. It may be clever, but it is not constitutional. To become law—hence eligible for amendment via reconciliation—the Senate health-care bill must actually be signed into law. The Constitution speaks directly to how that is done. According to Article I, Section 7, in order for a "Bill" to "become a Law," it "shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate" and be "presented to the President of the United States" for signature or veto. Unless a bill actually has "passed" both Houses, it cannot be presented to the president and cannot become a law.

To be sure, each House of Congress has power to "determine the Rules of its Proceedings." Each house can thus determine how much debate to permit, whether to allow amendments from the floor, and even to require supermajority votes for some types of proceeding. But House and Senate rules cannot dispense with the bare-bones requirements of the Constitution. Under Article I, Section 7, passage of one bill cannot be deemed to be enactment of another.

The Slaughter solution attempts to allow the House to pass the Senate bill, plus a bill amending it, with a single vote. The senators would then vote only on the amendatory bill. But this means that no single bill will have passed both houses in the same form. As the Supreme Court wrote in Clinton v. City of New York (1998), a bill containing the "exact text" must be approved by one house; the other house must approve "precisely the same text."

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Mark Levin essentially said the same thing as Michael McConell. There is NO ambiquity in that section of the constitution.....

Besides the House signing the original Senate bill as-is, Obozo must sign it before it becomes law.

This is what the Senate Parliamentarian said as well last week. Rumor has it , he was called to the white house tonight.

"This guy, Michael McConell, says the so-called 'Slaughter Rule' is unconstituional. He's a former federal judge. "

I suspect if they actually go forward with this, the public will learn more about bicameralism and the presentment clause than they learned their entire American Government class (assuming people still have to take that now). What the OJ trial did for DNA, this debacle will do for Art 1, Sec 7.