It seems very likely that if Obamacare is going to be stopped, it will have to happen in the House. And that means turning some of supporters the deeply unpopular bill into opponents with at least enough spine to tell Nancy Pelosi and the president “No.”
Thus the two lists below. The first list is of all the so-called “Blue Dogs,” the alleged “moderate Democrats” in the House. Many refused to vote for Obamacare the first time around, and they need to be bucked up and made to understand that their hopes of re-election depend upon continuing to stand against the government takeover of American health care and the massive cuts to Medicare on which the takeover is premised.
The second list are the Democrats who voted for the bill in the fall but who hail from swing districts. These are the House members identified by the National Republican Congressional Committee’s ReverseTheVote.org effort. The last thing they want are phone calls and e-mails from voters pledging to throw time and money at their opponents if Obamacare passes.
The Congressional switchboard works for them all – 202-225-3121, but direct calls to their offices and especially their district offices are even more effective. E-mails work as well, but many of their number won’t accept e-mails unless a district zip code is used, which means a little work for the dedicated anti-Obamacare activist. (Just use the zip code of their district office address if you want to communicate despite their filter.)
What matters is a wall of calls between now and the last-ditch effort to push the bill through. Some of the pro-life Demcrats led by Bart Stupak will stay strong and refuse to support the Senate bill with its public funding of abortion, but some will fold. Perhaps a Member or two will vote no as well because there is no “public option” by that name and they realize if they don’t get it now they’ll never get it.
But it will be a very close thing either way. Never have your calls and e-mails mattered more.
Contact The Blue Dogs:
Alabama
Rep. Bobby Bright 2nd District
DC Phone: (202) 225-2901
District Phone: Dothan (334) 794-9680; Montgomery (334) 277-9113; Opp (334) 493-9253 Link to E-mail
Rep. Parker Griffith 5th District
DC Phone: (202) 225-4801
District Phone: Huntsville (256) 551-0190; Decatur (256) 355-9400; Shoals (256) 381-3450 Link to E-mail
Arkansas
Rep. Marion Berry 1st District
DC Phone: (202) 225-4076
District Phone: Jonesboro (870) 972-4600; Cabot (501) 843-4955; Mountain Home (870) 425-3510 Link to E-Mail
Rep. Mike Ross 4th District
DC Phone: 1-800-223-2220
District Phone: El Dorado (870) 881-0681; Hot Springs (501) 520-5892; Pine Bluff (870) 536-3376; Prescott (870) 887-6787 Link to E-mail
President Obama declared the health care debate over on Wednesday and urged congressional Democrats to take the politically risky step of pushing his newly written compromise reform bill through using a controversial tactic to circumvent a Republican filibuster.
Calling for an “up-or-down” vote, Mr. Obama offered to add a few Republican ideas to the $1 trillion bill, but made clear that the time for talk was over.
“Every idea has been put on the table; every argument has been made,” Mr. Obama said in a speech before an audience of health care professionals in the East Room of the White House. “So now is the time to make a decision about how to finally reform health care so that it works, not just for the insurance companies, but for America’s families and businesses.”
Republicans scoffed at Mr. Obama’s tough talk, vowing to fight the effort at every turn and to tap the American public’s distaste for the measure in the midterm elections.
“They’re making a vigorous effort to try to jam this down the throats of the American people, who don’t want it,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican.
“We think that’s a policy mistake, and we think resorting to these kinds of tactics, to thumb your nose at the American people, is something that ought to be resisted,” Mr. McConnell added.
At stake is the biggest policy initiative of the year-old Obama presidency, a rewrite of the nation’s health care system that would trim hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare, expand Medicaid, mandate that every American join a plan and rewrite rules telling insurance companies how they can operate.
The House and Senate have passed their own versions of bills, but the debate has been stalled for nearly two months after Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate in January.
Now, Democrats are looking to turn to a complex budget procedure known as “reconciliation,” under which legislation can pass the Senate with 51 votes rather than 60.
President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are embarked on a radical plan to fundamentally change American health care.
The operative term is “radical,” and the media should use that term in order to accurately convey the nature not just of the scope of the changes being pushed, or of the level of Medicare cuts on which those changes are premised, but also to accurately describe the process by which the radical Democrats propose to impose their vision.
The plan is to push Obamacare through the House on the promise of a subsequent “fix” that will use an arcane Senate procedure known as “reconciliation” to modify the health care legislation in order to bypass the Senate’s 60-vote requirement for substantive legislation.
No matter what rhetoric the Democrats employ, this is indeed a radical — there’s that word again — maneuver, one that will demolish forever the Senate’s long-standing tradition of requiring a supermajority to enact sweeping legislation that fundamentally alters an area of complex law. Reconciliation has indeed been used for tax rate changes, which go up and down, and on two occasions for very focused initiatives on welfare reform and continuance of health care coverage.
But reconciliation is a recent and rare exception to the rule of supermajority, and its use here will forever spell the end of the 60-vote requirement for major legislation. If the vast changes contemplated by Obamacare can be pushed through reconciliation, then there is no limiting principle for the future.
Expect both conservatives and liberals to insist that, if the process could be made to fit for Obamacare in 2010, then it surely must be able to accommodate any other fervently hoped for piece of legislation.
Thus in the space of 10 years the Senate Democrats will have re-engineered the supermajority tradition of the “Greatest Deliberative Body in the World” into one that is routinely applied to judicial nominees but waived for the most sweeping, most partisan legislative jam-downs.
With the exception of the bipartisan filibuster of President Johnson’s ethically compromised pick of Abe Fortas as chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1968, judicial filibusters were unheard of before 2003.
Though “blue slips” and “holds” did hobble many nominees in committee or on the floor, these procedures are distinct from the requirement of 60-plus votes to pass new laws. As rare as a judicial filibuster was in the last century, so, too, was the use of reconciliation to avoid the requirement of supermajority in law-making. Senate Democrats have trashed both traditions, and both were done in the service of ideology over basic traditions of governance.
Pelosi’s tired talking point about “majority rule” asks the public to dismiss as irrelevant the jettisoning of a long-standing approach to governance that limited the speed with which Congress could act.
This has been a virtue of the American republic since “The Federalist Papers” defended the Constitution’s original design as one intended to keep factions from moving too quickly to dominate politics for short times of abrupt change.
We are not a majority rule system, and never have been. Government’s ability to move quickly was cabined from the start and for the very good reason that sudden swings in law are not often to the advantage of freedom.
If Obamacare does indeed make it into law, the damage it will do to health care will be immense. But just as great a cost will be the injury done to the Senate and to the measured approach to legislation that has marked America as a deliberate and deliberating republic.
“There have been a lot of comments from every Republican about the polls,” President Obama said near the end of the mind-numbing White House summit on health care reform. “What’s interesting is when you poll people about the individual elements in each of these bills, they’re all for them.”
What Obama was addressing was a dilemma that drives Democrats crazy. Polls show the public supports some parts of the Democratic national health care reform plan, but adamantly opposes the comprehensive bill now dying a slow death on Capitol Hill.
Just look at the latest survey from CNN and Opinion Research. When asked if they support “preventing health insurance companies from dropping coverage for people who become seriously ill,” 62 percent say yes. When asked whether they support “requiring all large and midsized businesses to provide health insurance for their employees,” 72 percent say yes. And when asked if they support “preventing health insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions,” 58 percent say yes.
On the other hand, asked what Congress should do on health care — pass the current bill, start work on an entirely new bill, or stop working on the issue altogether — a huge majority opposes the Democratic proposal now on the table. Just 25 percent of those surveyed want to see the bill passed. Forty-eight percent want Congress to start over, and 25 percent want lawmakers to stop working on health care altogether. Put those last two together, and an overwhelming majority of 73 percent do not want Congress to pass the current bill.
The White House is cherry-picking the news it likes; that’s what Obama was doing when he said the public is “all for” elements of the bill. But bring up the polls showing people just don’t want the current bill, and the administration gets a little dodgy.
“Who knows what is in those polls, how they were taken, when they were taken?” White House health care spokeswoman Linda Douglass told Fox News during a break in the summit.
But why do people support some elements of the bill while opposing the bill overall? Some Democrats blame Republican misinformation. Some believe it’s because the bill isn’t yet a reality, and people would love it, if it were only passed. Others say the public is just stupid.
Few Democrats can accept the possibility that voters are telling them their whole approach is wrong. Big, comprehensive legislative proposals just make people nervous.
“We don’t do comprehensive well,” Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander said at the health summit. “We’ve watched the comprehensive, economywide, cap and trade. We’ve watched the comprehensive immigration bill … we’ve watched the comprehensive health care bill. And they fall of their own weight.”
That’s what’s happening now. And it’s something Democrats would know, if they had listened to one of their leading pollsters.
Back during the 2004 presidential race, there was a debate going on inside the John Kerry campaign. Should the Democratic candidate push bold, far-reaching proposals, or should he balance boldness with more modest initiatives?
Pollster Stanley Greenberg did some research. He found that, when considered individually, Kerry’s most sweeping plans were more popular with voters than his more modest ones. “Voters are ready to respond to new ideas, particularly bold ones,” Greenberg wrote.
To further test the idea, Greenberg put together a hypothetical Kerry agenda — he called it “Bold Kerry” — which included all of the candidate’s bold ideas.
Voters balked. They were uneasy with the big agenda, even though they liked some elements of it. “While voters are clearly open to bold initiatives to major problems, they may be less attracted to the candidate who wants to act boldly in every area, without exception,” Greenberg concluded. “All together, that may have suggested an expanding scope for government beyond what people felt they could trust.”
And that is what is happening now with health care. Ever since Inauguration Day, the White House has acted on the assumption that, because voters elected Barack Obama, they want “Bold Obama.” All the evidence suggests that is wrong.
At the end of the summit, Obama said that if he can’t reach an agreement with Republicans — and there’s no chance if the existing bill stays on the table — then “we’ve got to go ahead and make some decisions.” That means jamming the bill through Congress against the public’s wishes. And if there’s still dispute, Obama said, “that’s what elections are for.”
He’s right. This is an issue that won’t be fully settled until November.
Thursday’s much-hyped health “summit” seemed mainly designed to show the president telling Republicans, “Those are all legitimate points.” Democrats admit it was a setup to pass their $2 trillion plan.
Not long before the president assembled Democrats and Republicans at the Garden Room of Blair House for a health care powwow, Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., let it all hang out on the House floor, roaring that “every single Republican I have ever met in my entire life is a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry.”
Civility was the cool thing during the grand gathering, but the real purpose behind this televised event was cutthroat.
A Politico story by Mike Allen made that clear, reporting that according to a Democratic official the summit was meant to “give a face to gridlock, in the form of House and Senate Republicans.”
Democratic Party strategists told the Web-based publication that the push will begin early next week for “a massive, Democrats-only health care plan.” The official said of the summit’s purpose: “The point is to alter the political atmospherics.”
Clearly, while the public face with the C-SPAN cameras on is the president’s soft-spoken “those are all reasonable points,” the unseen reality is closer to the partisan rants of Rep. Weiner.
Again and again, Democratic participants insisted that “we’re really not that far apart,” “we really are close” and “we basically agree” except for “semantic differences.” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., whose trouble with numbers extends to his own tax returns and whose airtime was buried toward the end of the event, absurdly claimed that there was 70% agreement between Democrats and Republicans.
When Republicans respectfully objected, with factual backup, that the differences were actually basic, relating to government vs. individual control, they were curtly accused of rattling off political “talking points” by the president.
A perfect example of the trickery was the president’s seeming willingness to agree to let consumers buy health insurance across state lines — maybe after his national health insurance exchange is established. The continual theme: Let the federal government intrude, then we can talk.
President Obama pledged to “listen” at the outset of his much-ballyhooed bipartisan health care summit on Thursday. Turns out he meant he’d be listening to his own voice.
By the end of the televised event, Mr. Obama had spoken for 119 minutes – nine minutes more than the 110 minutes consumed by 17 Republicans. The 21 Democratic lawmakers used 114 minutes, giving the president and his supporters a whopping 233 minutes, according to a “talk clock” kept by GOP aides.
From the beginning, no one could agree on anything, even how much time each side had used. When a miffed Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, pointed out early on that Democrats had controlled 52 minutes to Republicans’ 24, Mr. Obama jumped in to dispute even that.
“I don’t think that’s quite right,” he said.
But then, with a twinkle in his eye, he added: “You’re right, there was an imbalance on the opening statements because – I’m the president.” Half the room laughed. “I didn’t count my time in terms of dividing it evenly.”
The two sides faced off in the Blair House’s Garden Room, with members of Congress, grouped by party, sitting across from one another in a large square. Throughout the six-hour bloviating blabfest, no fences appeared to be mended and no hatchets buried.
In fact, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemed so intractable that neither looked at Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee as he delivered the opening statement for the Republicans. Every time the C-SPAN 3 camera panned to the pair, they were looking straight ahead, expressionless.
Throughout the event, Mr. Obama, a former professor, looked, well, professorial. He listened attentively, his head cocked, his chin raised. He narrowed his eyes in attentiveness at a point here or there, blinking often; he jotted notes in a small book as Republicans spoke; he rested his head on his hand, giving full attention to the speaker.
But each time a Republican sought to break in to rebut a point made by the president or a fellow Democrat, Mr. Obama looked a bit frustrated and made clear who was in charge of the bipartisan discussion.
“Let me just finish, Lamar,” he said during his rebuttal to the senator’s opening statement. “No, no, no, no. Let me – and this is an example of where we’ve got to get our facts straight,” he said when Mr. Alexander sought to clarify a point.
We have some strong disagreements on the numbers,” President Obama said after Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) concluded his devastating critique of the Democrats’ budget claims, “but I don’t want to get too bogged down.” In the ensuing debate, what became clear is that the Democrats just don’t have an answer to Ryan’s arguments. They ducked, dodged, and changed the subject repeatedly, because Ryan’s numbers themselves are unimpeachable.
The Democrats are touting an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office that their health-care bill would reduce the deficit by around $130 billion over the next ten years. What Ryan pointed out — and what no Democrat even attempted to counter — is that this is because the legislation front-loads tax hikes and Medicare cuts and defers costs, forcing the CBO to score ten years of offsets with only six years of spending. Looked at on a level playing field, the true ten-year cost of the bill is $2.3 trillion rather than $950 billion, Ryan said.
Then he brought up another gimmick: The bill is full of double-counting. “Savings” are counted as offsets for new health-care spending and at the same time set aside to pay for future entitlements. For instance, the Democrats claim $52 billion in offsets as a result of increasing Social Security payroll-tax revenues. But these dollars are already claimed for future Social Security beneficiaries. They can’t pay for both. The Democrats take another $72 billion in premiums intended to fund a new long-term-care program and count them as offsets for other spending. Ryan pointed out that Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad has called this “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.”
Perhaps most important, Ryan confronted the Democrats with the issue of the “Doc Fix” — a separate bill that would have added $371 billion to the Democrats’ legislation if it hadn’t been stripped out. The Doc Fix would have prevented Medicare reimbursements to doctors from plummeting by 21 percent, a drop that Congress put into the bill to improve its CBO score but never planned to allow, most political observers agree.
In the course of unveiling Obama’s new health reform proposal on a conference call with reporters this morning, White House advisers made it clearer than ever before: If the GOP filibusters health reform, Dems will move forward on their own and pass it via reconciliation.
The assertion, which is likely to spark an angry response from GOP leaders, ups the stakes in advance of the summit by essentially daring Republicans to try to block reform.
“The President expects and believes the American people deserve an up or down vote on health reform,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said on the call.
Pfeiffer said no decision had been made how to proceed, pending the outcome of the summit. But he added that Obama’s proposal is designed to have “maximum flexibility to ensure that we can get an up or down vote if the opposition decides to take the extraordinary step of filibustering health reform.”
Translation: If the GOP doesn’t cooperate with us in any meaningful sense, we’re moving forward on our own.
Also on the call, White House advisers detailed Obama’s new proposal, which was just posted on the White House web site, and discussed the ways it seeks a compromise between the Senate and House proposals. Among the details:
* As expected, the plan has no public option — but this does not preclude a reconciliation vote on the public option later.
* The proposal boosts the threshold for the “Cadillac” tax on the most expensive health plans from $23,000 for a family plan to $27,500. That’s actually a better deal than some labor officials were expecting, though some House Dems will still be angry that the tax is being included at all.
* The proposal also preserves the Senate bill’s state-based exchanges, and does not have a national exchange, as the House bill did.
* However, House Dems will be cheered by the fact that Obama’s compromise closes the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” coverage gap.
* Also, the bill nixes Ben Nelson’s Nebraska deal and boosts Federal financing for Medicaid expansion in all states.
* And finally, as expected, Obama’s proposal creates a Federal panel to monitor and block exorbitant rate hikes and other unfair practices by the insurance industry.
One final note: On the call, Pfeiffer was careful to note that the proposal is not the product of an agreement between the House and Senate, but rather is “the President’s bill.” This is meant to preclude GOP efforts to cast the proposal as the product of a backroom deal. The lines are drawn.
**************************************
Update: Eric Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring emails a response:
The Obama plan costs a trillion dollars, puts government in control of personal health decisions, and allows the government to set prices in the private market. That mirrors the Pelosi/Reid plans that have already been soundly rejected by the bipartisan majority of Americans.
Fox News has obtained a letter penned by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) addressed to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
In the letter, they question the president’s true commitment to Bipartisanship and implore the White House to conduct all talks in public. In addition, they also ask the president to take the reconciliation process off the table.
Here is the letter:
February 8, 2010
The Honorable Rahm Emanuel
Chief of Staff
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. Emanuel:
We welcome President Obama’s announcement of forthcoming bipartisan health care talks. In fact, you may remember that last May, Republicans asked President Obama to hold bipartisan discussions on health care in an attempt to find common ground on health care, but he declined and instead chose to work with only Democrats. Since then, the President has given dozens of speeches on health care reform, operating under the premise that the more the American people learn about his plan, the more they will come to like it. Just the opposite has occurred: a majority of Americans oppose the House and Senate health care bills and want them scrapped so we can start over with a step-by-step approach focused on lowering costs for families and small businesses.
Just as important, scrapping the House and Senate health care bills would help end the uncertainty they are creating for workers and businesses and thus strengthen our shared commitment to focusing on creating jobs. Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward on health care in a bipartisan way, does that mean he will agree to start over so that we can develop a bill that is truly worthy of the support and confidence of the American people?
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said today that the President is “absolutely not” resetting the legislative process for health care. If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate.Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward in a bipartisan way, does that mean he has taken off the table the idea of relying solely on Democratic votes and jamming through health care reform by way of reconciliation? As the President has noted recently, Democrats continue to hold large majorities in the House and Senate, which means they can attempt to pass a health care bill at any time through the reconciliation process.
Eliminating the possibility of reconciliation would represent an important show of good faith to Republicans and the American people.If the President intends to present any kind of legislative proposal at this discussion, will he make it available to members of Congress and the American people at least 72 hours beforehand? Our ability to move forward in a bipartisan way through this discussion rests on openness and transparency. Will the President include in this discussion congressional Democrats who have opposed the House and Senate health care bills? This bipartisan discussion should reflect the bipartisan opposition to both the House bill and the kickbacks and sweetheart deals in the Senate bill.Will the President be inviting officials and lawmakers from the states to participate in this discussion?
As you may know, legislation has been introduced in at least 36 state legislatures, similar to the proposal just passed by the Democratic-controlled Virginia State Senate, providing that no individual may be compelled to purchase health insurance. Additionally, governors of both parties have raised concerns about the additional costs that will be passed along to states under both the House and Senate bills. The President has also mentioned his commitment to have “experts” participate in health care discussions. Will the Feb. 25 discussion involve such “experts?” Will those experts include the actuaries at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who have determined that the both the House and Senate health care bill raise costs – just the opposite of their intended effect – and jeopardize seniors’ access to high-quality care by imposing massive Medicare cuts? Will those experts include the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which has stated that the GOP alternative would reduce premiums by up to 10 percent? Also, will Republicans be permitted to invite health care experts to participate?
Finally, as you know, this is the first televised White House health care meeting involving the President since last March. Many health care meetings of the closed-door variety have been held at the White House since then, including one where a sweetheart deal was worked out with union leaders. Will the special interest groups that the Obama Administration has cut deals with be included in this televised discussion?Of course, Americans have been dismayed by the fact that the President has broken his own pledge to hold televised health care talks. We can only hope this televised discussion is the beginning, not the end, of attempting to correct that mistake. Will the President require that any and all future health care discussions, including those held on Capitol Hill, meet this common-sense standard of transparency and openness?Your answers to these critical questions will help determine whether this will be a truly open, bipartisan discussion or merely an intramural exercise before Democrats attempt to jam through a job-killing health care bill that the American people can’t afford and don’t support. ‘Bipartisanship’ is not writing proposals of your own behind closed doors, then unveiling them and demanding Republican support. Bipartisan ends require bipartisan means.
These questions are also designed to try and make sense of the widening gap between the President’s rhetoric on bipartisanship and the reality. We cannot help but notice that each of the President’s recent bipartisan overtures has been coupled with harsh, misleading partisan attacks. For instance, the President decries Republican ‘obstruction’ when it was Republicans who first proposed bipartisan health care talks last May. The President says Republicans are ‘sitting on the sidelines’ just days after holding up our health care alternative and reading from it word for word. The President has every right to use his bully pulpit as he sees fit, but this is the kind of credibility gap that has the American people so fed up with business as usual in Washington.We look forward to receiving your answers and continuing to discuss ways we can move forward in a bipartisan manner to address the challenges facing the American people.
Highly informed sources on Capitol Hill have revealed to me details of the Democratic plan to sneak Obamacare through Congress, despite collapsing public approval for healthcare “reform” and disintegrating congressional support in the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts.
President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all have agreed to the basic framework of the plan.
Their plan is clever but can be stopped if opponents of radical healthcare reform act quickly and focus on a core group of 23 Democratic Congressman. If just a few of these 23 Democrats are “flipped” and decide to oppose the bill, the whole Obama-Pelosi-Reid stratagem falls apart.
Here’s what I learned top Democrats are planning to implement.
Senate Democrats will go to the House with a two-part deal.
First, the House will pass the Senate’s Obamacare bill that passed the Senate in December. The House leadership will vote on the Senate bill, and Pelosi will allow no amendments or modifications to the Senate bill.
How will Pelosi’s deal fly with rambunctious liberal members of her majority who don’t like the Senate bill, especially its failure to include a public option, put heavy fines on those who don’t get insurance, and offering no income tax surcharge on the “rich”?
That’s where the second part of the Pelosi-deal comes in.
Behind closed doors, Reid and Pelosi have agreed in principle that changes to the Senate bill will be made to satisfy liberal House members — but only after the Senate bill is passed and signed into law by Obama.
This deal will be secured by a pledge from Reid and the Senate’s Democratic caucus that they will make “fixes” to the Senate bill after it becomes law with Obama’s John Hancock.
But you may ask what about the fact that, without Republican Scott Brown and independent Democrats such as Joe Lieberman, Reid simply doesn’t have the 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster that typically can stop major legislation?
According to my source, Reid will provide to Pelosi a letter signed by 52 Democratic senators indicating they will pass the major changes, or “fixes,” the House Democrats are demanding. Again, these fixes will be approved by the Senate only after Obama signs the Senate bill into law.
Reid also has agreed to bypass Senate cloture and filibuster rules and claim that these modifications fall under “reconciliation” and don’t require 60 Senate votes.
To pass the fixes, he won’t need one Republican; he won’t even need Joe Lieberman or wavering Democrats such as Jim Webb of Virginia.
His 52 pledged senators give him a simple majority to pass any changes they want, which will later be rubberstamped by Pelosi’s House and signed by Obama.
This plan, of course, is a total subversion of the legislative process.
Typically, the Senate and House pass their own unique legislation and then both bills go to a conference committee. In conference, the leadership of both Democrat-dominated houses wheels and deals and irons out differences.
The final compromise bill is then sent back to the full Senate and full House for a vote and has to pass both to go to the president.
In the House, a simple majority passes the legislation. But under Senate rules, major legislation requires 60 votes to end a filibuster.
As it stands, the House bill and Senate bill have major discrepancies. Reid does not have 60 votes to pass a compromise bill that would no doubt include some of the radical provisions House members have been demanding.
But if the House passes the exact Senate bill that passed by a 60-39 Senate vote last month, there is no need for a conference on the bill. It will go directly to the president’s desk.
There is a rub to all of this.
This secret plan being hatched by Pelosi and Reid requires not only a pledge by 52 Democratic senators to vote later for the House modifications. House liberals must actually believe these Senators will live up to their pledge and pass the fixes at some future date.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she does not have the votes to pass the Senate’s version of a health insurance bill that is now in severe jeopardy of being scrapped.
Just days ago, that was the most viable option for keeping alive President Obama’s top domestic priority, but with the election of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, the fragile coalition of Democrats has broken apart as lawmakers bicker over which portions of the $900 billion, 10-year Senate bill they will and won’t accept.
Emerging from a closed-door meeting with her caucus, the House speaker vented frustration with the massive version of the legislation.
“In its present form without any changes I don’t think it’s possible to pass the Senate bill in the House,” said Pelosi, D-Calif. “I don’t see the votes for it at this time.”
As Capitol Hill attempts to overcome the shock over Republican U.S. Senator-elect from Massachusetts Scott Brown’s earth-shattering victory last night, the upset appears to have left supporters of President Obama’s health care bill with few options to save the massive overhaul from defeat.
In his acceptance speech Tuesday night, Brown confirmed a primary theme of his campaign: that he would cast a critical 41st vote against the health care bill, leaving Democrats unable to surmount a Republican filibuster to destroy the measure. Brown defeated Democrat opponent Martha Coakley 52%-47% to overtake the seat held by Democratic icon Sen. Ted Kennedy for nearly 47 years.
“One thing is very, very clear as I traveled across this state. People do not want the trillion dollar health care plan that is being forced on the American people, and this bill is not being debated openly and fairly,” said Brown to cheering crowds. “It will raise taxes, it will hurt Medicare, it will destroy jobs and run our nation deeper in to debt.
“The independent majority has delivered a great victory.”
Many experts project that the Brown win will have catastrophic consequences for the health care overhaul, although Democrats are floating a few options. One of the most talked-about ideas has been to convince the House to pass the whole Senate bill unamended, thus allowing the bill to avoid a second Senate vote.
Leaders would then attempt to accommodate House Democrats’ interests in health care reform with a follow-up, separate budget bill, which would dodge the filibuster by requiring only 51 Senate votes through a process known as reconciliation.
It is unclear, however, how central House Democrat demands for health care reform – such as a more comprehensive public insurance option – could be resolved in a bill restricted purely to federal budget issues.
In pushing a giant step closer to a health care reform deal, Democratic leaders are once again drawing fire from their critics for extending special treatment to an interest group in exchange for its support of the bill.
In pushing a giant step closer to a health care reform deal, Democratic leaders are once again drawing fire from their critics for extending special treatment to an interest group in exchange for its support of the bill.
The latest deal was struck Thursday among the White House, Congress and union leaders over the proposed tax on high-value “Cadillac” health insurance plans.”
Unions had objected strongly to the proposed tax on high-value insurance policies, fearing it would hurt their members, and they won several concessions from the administration. Under the deal, if it becomes law, union workers will be shielded from the 40 percent tax for five years — until 2018. The threshold for the tax also was raised so that it will kick in for plans worth $24,000 instead of $23,000. And dental and vision coverage will not count toward that threshold.
But what about everybody else?
The unions, traditional supporters of the Democratic Party and a major factor in Obama’s political infrastructure, got a deal, but Republicans said that non-union workers will still have to pay the tax from the get-go starting in 2013.
“I guess this bill is only good if it doesn’t apply to you,” GOPAC Chairman Frank Donatelli said.
“Millions of non-union workers … would be forced to pay higher taxes for the same benefits their union counterparts” receive, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee said in a written statement.
By Hugh Hewitt Friday, February 26, 2010
“There have been a lot of comments from every Republican about the polls,” President Obama said near the end of the mind-numbing White House summit on health care reform. “What’s interesting is when you poll people about the individual elements in each of these bills, they’re all for them.”
Thursday’s much-hyped health “summit” seemed mainly designed to show the president telling Republicans, “Those are all legitimate points.” Democrats admit it was a setup to pass their $2 trillion plan.
President Obama pledged to “listen” at the outset of his much-ballyhooed bipartisan health care summit on Thursday. Turns out he meant he’d be listening to his own voice.
We have some strong disagreements on the numbers,” President Obama said after Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) concluded his devastating critique of the Democrats’ budget claims, “but I don’t want to get too bogged down.” In the ensuing debate, what became clear is that the Democrats just don’t have an answer to Ryan’s arguments. They ducked, dodged, and changed the subject repeatedly, because Ryan’s numbers themselves are unimpeachable.
The game of chicken commenceth — right now.
Fox News has obtained a letter penned by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) addressed to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
From 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she does not have the votes to pass the Senate’s version of a health insurance bill that is now in severe jeopardy of being scrapped.
As Capitol Hill attempts to overcome the shock over Republican U.S. Senator-elect from Massachusetts Scott Brown’s earth-shattering victory last night, the upset appears to have left supporters of President Obama’s health care bill with few options to save the massive overhaul from defeat.
In pushing a giant step closer to a health care reform deal, Democratic leaders are once again drawing fire from their critics for extending special treatment to an interest group in exchange for its support of the bill.
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