Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is prepared to enact President Barack Obama’s massive health care legislation through a legislative procedure that would allow the House to pass fixes to the Senate bill without taking a direct vote on the underlying legislation.
Under the provision, also used by Republicans when they controlled the House, leadership would simply “deem” the House to be in sync with the Senate version of the bill, and proceed from there. The Associated Press described the maneuver as “a kind of legislative fig leaf” to spare House Democrats from having to directly vote to approve a Senate bill many of them had bitterly criticized.
The “deeming” rule is also known as the “self-executing” rule, which seems an apt description, considering the conventional wisdom that House members who go along with the scheme might find themselves on the outside looking in after the November elections, so upset is grass-roots America said to be with the subterfuge.
Still, the Pelosi Plan may be an idea whose time has come not just for Washington politicians, but for everyone. If Congress can deem things to have happened when they have not, surely the average bloke can employ the device, as well, in his struggle to make a living.
Haven’t yet filed your federal income tax return? No problem. Announce to the Internal Revenue Service that because times are tough here in the hinterland you have deemed your taxes for calendar year 2009 paid in full. See you next year, Mr. Tax Man. Granted, when the IRS enforcers get on your case this may turn out to be more the self-executing version of the Pelosi Procedure than the deeming version. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Truth be known, we deem our way through life more than we might realize. The privileged man deems himself above the law, the working stiff deems the intellectual a snob, the teacher deems Johnny a prime candidate for after-school detention, and the motorist who plows past a stop sign without so much as having slowed his vehicle deems the maneuver to be the same as having come to a stop.
Perhaps nowhere, though, do we deem so much as in the world of sports. A baseball umpire deems the double play to be successful if, when the second baseman accepts the ball from the shortstop and makes his pivot, he does not tag second base as the rules stipulate, but is merely somewhere within the bag’s ZIP code. A chest-thumping football player who has made a routine tackle deems himself worthy of strutting like Benito Mussolini in celebration. As we fill out our brackets for the NCAA basketball tournament, we deem past performances of certain teams their most redeeming feature.
A few years ago, a series of television ads for a major beer company featured two young golfers conceding outlandishly long putts to each other — deeming the ball to have dropped into the cup from all manner of tricky angles as though unerringly stroked by Tiger Woods himself.
One ad had the duo driving by the tee box on a short par-three hole, each deeming the other to have aced the hole without having stepped from their golf cart. “That’s the best I’ve ever played that hole,” remarked one golfer, high-fiving his partner as they continued on down the cart path, beer at the ready.
I once regularly toiled at the game with a dedicated deemer who had a habit of picking up his ball and sauntering off to the next hole before finishing business on the one we were playing. When, as official scorekeeper, I’d ask him how many strokes I should charge to him on the hole he would reply, “Oh, put me down for a four. If I had putted out, that’s about what I would have had …”
By most accounts, House Democrats have deemed themselves a birdie on the final hole to win their match with minority Republicans on the health care thing. They stand ready to soon repair to the 19th hole lounge to celebrate, even as 38 states are said to be preparing to deem certain portions of the sweeping legislation lawsuit-worthy.
This would suggest that the match may not be over until the fat lady is deemed to have putted out in a playoff round held in court. If the spectators in the health care gallery aren’t having fun yet, they certainly can’t blame the politicians who are hacking their way from one hazard to another out on the course.
BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may reach him by e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.com.