Deem and Pass: Bachmann was against it before she was for it

House Republicans passed a bill on Thursday that calls for a budget bill containing $61 billion in cuts to become law if the Senate does not pass a spending plan by Wednesday. Bachmann, along with all but 15 Republicans, voted for the bill that would “deem” the budget bill into law, also known as a “self-executing rule.” One year ago, Bachmann called a similar bill “violence to the Constitution” and suggested impeachment if Democrats “deemed and passed” health care reform into law.

The move was not unanimous among Republicans. Libertarians such as Rep. Ron Paul of Texas voted against it, as did fellow Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, who said the bill “violates my conscious and the Constitution, and I cannot vote for it.”

All of Minnesota’s Republican members of Congress voted for the self-executing rule.

On Sean Hannity’s Fox show last year, Bachmann said of the deem-and-pass strategy and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, “That should laugh her out of the House and there should be people that are calling for impeachment off of something like this. That’s how bad this is. I mean, trust me, Dennis Hastert never could have gotten away with this.”

In fact, Bachmann took to numerous media outlets to oppose the strategy, which Democrats soon dropped in favor of an up or down vote. The measure at the time was being proposed by New York Rep. Louise Slaughter.

“They use the Slaughter rule in the House, something that hasn’t been done before,” Bachmann told NewsMax’s Ronald Kessler.

And on Fox’s Red Eye, Bachmann told the host, “It does great violence to the Constitution. We call it the ‘slaughter the House rule.’ It’s never been done before in the history of the Congress.”

Bachmann was rebuked by fact-checkers when she made the claim that deem and pass was never used before, and she quickly backtracked.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, criticized Bachmann on the House floor on Thursday over the bill.

“But they pretend in their language what is clearly contrary to the Constitution. Because they say, if it doesn’t pass, the provisions of H.R. 1, the bill they’ve sent to the Senate, passed by the house on February 19, 2011, are hereby enacted into law. In other words, we’re going to deem it passed,” he said. “Michelle Bachmann, apparently may be a candidate for president said this, that deem and pass ‘ignored the constitution and warranted the impeachment of the House Speaker… there should be people that are calling for impeachment off of something like this.’”