Legislative strategy and policy development approaches
The self-executing rule, also known as ‘deem and pass' has recently been criticized by Newt Gingrich and Joe Scarborough. The self-executing rule is a method of procedure that the U.S. House of Representatives use to approve legislation. This rule is in the form of a simple resolution and serves to specify which bills are under consideration by the House. When the House votes to approve a rule that in inclusive of a self-executing provision, the House at the same time agrees to dispose of a matter that is separate as the self-executing rule specifies. This allows modifications or amendments to bills to be passed simultaneously to the bill underlying the modification or amendment. While this procedure does serve to streamline the process of legislation, and is reported to have been used on 85 different occasions in the five years between 2005 and 2010 (Oleszek, 2005, Matt, 2010, and Montgomery and Kane, 2010) , this procedure is questioned by some legal scholars in regards to its constitutionality. (Linkins, 2010; Barbash, 2010)