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‘Vapor bill’

Despite repeated promises from the Obama administration to make legislation more transparent and accessible, the Senate Finance Committee will vote on a plain-English version of health care legislation Tuesday, but not the actual legislative text that could become law.

The committee rejected, mostly on party lines, an amendment from Sen. Jim Bunning, Kentucky Republican, requiring that the final version be made public for 72 hours before holding a committee vote on it. So, now the easy-to-read description of the bill, called “conceptual language,” will be voted on, rather than the complex legalese required of a final bill that could be made into law. Because of this, some critics have been calling the Senate Finance Committee’s bill a “vapor bill.”

The term was originated by Brian Darling, director of Senate relations at the Heritage Foundation, and Dan Perrin of Redstate.com, and is a play on “vaporware,” a disparaging name for heavily promoted software products that are never brought to market.

Secret plan

Brian Darling believes the “vapor bill,” which was scored in a positive manner by the Congressional Budget Office largely because it is not final, is the first step in the Democrats’ “secret” plan to pass health care legislation before Thanksgiving, without getting into a knock-down, drag-out fight over various amendments in the public eye.

“It gives them a good talking point,” he told The Washington Times.

Mr. Darling has outlined a four-step process that could hurry the process of passing such a massive bill.

He thinks that once the “vapor bill” passes out of committee, Sen. Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, will use his powers as majority leader to merge the committee bill with House-approved health care legislation and make other changes that were never approved by the committee.

Mr. Darling believes that in the third step, Mr. Reid will attach his new health care bill to House-approved tax legislation. This would be done to avoid any constitutional problems, as the Constitution requires any revenue-raising legislation to originate in the House. Doing so would be unusual, but legal. Most importantly, it would help streamline the legislative process. If the Senate did pass a tax bill with Mr. Reid’s health care legislation tacked on to it, the House could then pass that entire bill and send it to President Obama’s desk for his signature.

Complicated? Yes. Far-fetched? No, says Mr. Darling.

“I’ve heard leadership staffers openly talk about this,” he said. “And, it makes the most sense, as someone who follows Senate procedure, to get this to the president’s desk without a conference [with the House] and minimal participation by the American people.”

Backstabbed

A day after President Obama spoke at the Human Rights Campaign dinner, NBC’s John Harwood reported that White House advisers mocked, as pajama-clad children, gay bloggers who are pressuring them to enact gay-friendly policies.

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