As House Democrats consider a new legislative option for moving health care reform to President Obama's desk, Rules Committee Ranking Member David Dreier (R-Calif.) said only an up or down vote in the House on both the Senate bill and its reconciliation accompaniment would be appropriate for such a large piece of legislation.

"It's very painful and troubling to see the gymnastics by which they're going to avoid accountability," Dreier told reporters today during an off-camera briefing.

Under the proposed solution by Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the committee could "deem" the Senate bill passed upon passage of the accompanying reconciliation bill, which would fix some of the issues that House Democrats had with the Senate's bill. The move would theoretically save Democrats in vulnerable districts from technically voting for the Senate bill; they would only be voting to fix it and remove certain undesirable aspects from it, such as the now infamous "Cornhusker kickback."

But their vote, which Dreier said could take place Sunday, would still directly result in the passage of the Senate bill. Because there would be no vote on the Senate bill itself, "There is absolutely no accountability," Dreier said. "To resort to these kinds of tactics to deal with this is just plain wrong."

"While the process of lawmaking should be ugly, I have never seen it as ugly as it seems to be coming before us this week," he said. "The fact is every amount of energy that is being applied today is trying to avoid the accountability of an up or down vote on this process."

Reporters noted to Dreier that Republicans used similar tactics for large pieces of legislation when they were in power from 1995-2006. Dreier and one of his advisers said there was no comparison and that instances of deeming a bill passed without a vote were "pretty rare."

However, Dreier did admit that what the Democrats are doing is well within the rules. "It's something they can clearly do if they have the votes."

"There was nothing of this magnitude that was done" under GOP control, Dreier said. "The notion of having the federal government move to take control of what is one-sixth of the economy is something that deserves a much more open process than we are getting here."

In recent weeks and over the weekend, Democrats have sought to put the focus on what health care reform would mean for Americans and take the spotlight off the process of passing it.

"The one thing I'm sure of is that the American people don't know or care much about the sequencing of parliamentary procedures," White House senior adviser David Axelrod said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press." It's "not about procedure. It's about what are we going to do to protect the American people and give them the security they deserve?"

Noting Axelrod's statement, Dreier flatly disagreed, saying: "Process is substance."