In the House, a process called "deem and pass" was legislative tricker to enact legislation that does not have majority backing. It meant the House would pass the 2,700-page health-care bill without ever actually voting for it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it all when she said, in the final days of the debate, "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."
Public outrage and the protests of both Republican and Democratic members compelled Speaker Pelosi to back away from the "deem and pass" strategy of passing the bill without actually voting on it. The ugly health-care debacle finally came to an end with final passage of the overhaul in the House on March 21, 2010. The minority party was completely excluded from the shaping of major reform legislation.
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The above quotations are from Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders, by Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, and Kevin McCarthy. Click here for other excerpts from Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders, by Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, and Kevin McCarthy. Click here for other excerpts by Nancy Pelosi. Click here for a profile of Nancy Pelosi.
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