Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif.

Yesterday Rep. David Dreier, a Republican from Southern California, and the ranking member on the House Rules Committee, spoke with Matt Cover who writes for the Christian News Service (CNSNews.com) about the procedural issues involved in Democrats’ plans to pass health care reform, especially including the “Slaughter Rule,” named for the current Rules chair, Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York. As we noted earlier, Republicans are flogging away at the process, rather than the substance of the bill, because focusing on congressional procedures drives polling on reform down.

The content of what Dreier said to CNSNews ranged from disingenuous to outright lying — and CNSNews printed all of it without question, without bothering to fact check or present any sort of perspective from the pro-reform side.

That’s not journalism, it’s stenography — and, worse, propaganda.

And given the virulent homophobia of the sort of right-wing Christians who get their news from an outlet like CNSNews.com, it is worth noting that Dreier, though closeted, is the last known gay Republican House member. (He was passed over for majority leader in 2005 because he was gay.) Of course, CNSNews.com did not mention this fact because — and this really is ironic — it would have undermined Dreier’s credibility.

Let’s start with this minor gaffe because it serves as a “tell” about the disregard for the truth that underlies the piece. In the second paragraph, Matt Cover positions his interview with Dreier as “an exclusive interview with CNSNews.com.” Three paragraphs later, however, Dreier says, “I just did an interview on Fox, just in the last few minutes.” Perhaps Cover meant the interview was “exclusively” the only one Dreier was giving in the few minutes he spoke with CNSNews.com.

Picky? Sure. But come on.

Now to the substance. First, here’s Norm Ornstein, one of the few straight-shooters at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute and an expert on the Congress, criticizing the hypocrisy of both parties over the so-called “Slaughter Rule,” but singling out Dreier’s role when Dreier chaired the Rules Committee:

Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration. I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?[Emphasis added.]

Furthermore, as was noted here yesterday, when the House was under GOP control, from 1995 until 2007, Republicans used the rule to pass controversial legislation 202 times. Drier was chairman of the Rules Committee from 1999 to 2007, and so was instrumental in deploying the rules, as Ornstein noted.

Now here’s how Cover helped Drier propagandize about the Slaughter Rule in CNSNews.com yesterday:

CNSNews.com … asked Dreier whether the Slaughter Solution was constitutional. Some conservative legal experts, including syndicated radio host and former Justice Department Chief of Staff Mark Levin, have said the plan would violate the plain meaning of Article I, Section VII, which states in part, the votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively.”

Mark Levin is a soulless Rush Limbaugh clone radio host. Like Limbaugh, he is strictly a propagandist and has zero credibility on this or any issue.

Dreier replied that while he was not a constitutional expert and could not say “with absolute certainty” the plan was unconstitutional, other experts were raising just such a charge.

“I think that the best way for me to put that is it’s being debated, and the question is out there,” said Dreier. “I can’t say with absolute certainty that I know it’s unconstitutional. But I can this: I know that there’s a debate on it and I think that there are serious, serious questions about that.”

What a carefully parsed whopper. As chairman of the Rules Committee, Dreier would have been deeply involved in the court case against the rule brought by Democrats, and so had to know the court ruled against the Democrat and for him and the House GOP leadership.

Dreier explained that the issue was whether the intricacies of House procedure violated the clause which mandates that legislation pass with a vote of “yeas and nays.” He said that while “deeming” measures as having passed had been done before — like with a Slaughter Solution — it was done with “unanimous consent” and never on so large a policy issue, leading to the questions of constitutionality.

“This is procedure,” he explained. “Deeming measures is something that has happened in the past and I know the words ‘yeas and nays’ are in the U.S. Constitution. But if you look at the pattern of what has taken place, things are done by unanimous consent. So I will say that this process has been used in the past, but never on an issue of this magnitude.”

Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic seems to have a better memory of Dreier’s actions than congressman does himself:

GOPers, endorsed by their own rules guru, Rep. David Dreier of California, have used the maneuver to pass legislation large and small — including a $40 billion dollar deficit reduction bill. Dreier in 2005 used the tactic to allow Republicans to avoid having to take a recorded vote on an immigration measure. It’s also a bit rich for Republicans to complain about a parliamentary tactic being employed in a way that’s not in keeping with the spirit of the traditions of Congress.

And from the Gavel, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s blog:

This practice has been in use since at least 1933 – and has been commonly used under both Republicans and Democrats.

In 1948, the Republican-controlled House passed a resolution to consider as adopted Senate amendments to a bill to change tax rates.

In 1993, the House adopted a resolution to consider as adopted the Senate amendment to the Family and Medical Leave Act.

In 1996, the Republican-controlled House adopted a resolution to consider as adopted the conference report on Line Item Veto.

Just last month, the House approved a provision on PAYGO that simultaneously increased the debt limit. Separately, beginning in 1980 – and most years thereafter – the House has had in place a standing rule that approves automatically a joint resolution to increase the public debt limit upon adoption of a Budget Resolution that contemplates such an increase. Such a resolution has occurred 20 times in the last 30 years.

But readers of Matt Cover’s article about Rep. Dreier and health care reform yesterday learned none of the background information about this procedure, including the key fact that it has been in place for 77 years.

Cover also did not bother to seek out any other perspective on the rule or reform in general — especially not from a House Democrat, including, say, the Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter.

It’s bad for the country that the conservative movement puts out propaganda like this, knowing it will be swallowed whole, without analysis, by Christian conservatives.

You’d also think it might be bad for Christianity to have an organization calling itself the “Christian News Service” that feels no compunction about indulging in the grievous sin of lying, which is prohibited in the Ten Commandments, especially when the objective of the lying is to prevent sick people who are poor from getting treatment.