This week we get the news that some health insurers have decided to stop offering child-only plans due to cost and Obamacare regulation compliance issues.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air explains:

Most of us outside of the White House understood that by forcing insurers to take on more risk while pressuring them to keep prices down, we would either see insurers stop offering certain policies or go out of business altogether.  ObamaCare advocates kept insisting that we had to help the children by proceeding apace with their government takeover of the industry.  The result?  Suffer the children:

Some of the country’s most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start accepting children with preexisting medical conditions after Sept. 23.

The companies will continue to cover children who already have child-only policies. They will also accept children with preexisting conditions in new family policies.

Critics blast the insurers for their “immoral” decision, but they had little choice.  The federal government mandate requires them to accept any child at any time, regardless of any pre-existing condition, but doesn’t yet require parents of healthy children to buy policies for them.

There is a commercial out there that starts “this is the biggest no brainer since…” and I think that’s an appropriate phrase to use here.  Anyone that claimed this would not happen, or couldn’t have been foreseen, either had their head buried in the sand or have chosen to intentionally mislead others.

The very concept of insurance and risk pools has been ignored in the abomination law known as Obamacare.  Unless your goal is to drive insurance companies out of business (can you say single payer system?), it is not reasonable to tell insurance companies to increase coverage (no pre-existing conditions, no life time limits, etc.), but then tell them they can’t increase costs.

As opposed to the individual mandate as many Americans are, the reality is that the ONLY way that requirements such as no lifetime coverage limits and no pre-existing conditions can possibly work is to require every one in America to purchase coverage.  However, as the Obamacare law was designed to win elections in the November 2010 elections and get Obama re-elected in 2012, Pelosi, Reid and company chose to implement ‘benefits’ just before the mid-term elections, but wait until after the 2012 Presidential election to implement the unpopular aspects like the individual mandate.

Nancy Pelosi famously said that we have to pass the bill to know what’s in it, but the fact is that even now that it’s passed, most Congressmen and American citizens have not read the bill, and don’t know what’s in it.  More importantly, they still don’t understand the negative ramifications of the bill.

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Dear Friend,

I am closely monitoring thirty five House races and want to send you updates every week or so on the ones that most need your help. The most recent list is enclosed below. It has three new candidates: Rob Steele in Michigan, Morgan Philpot in Utah, and Mike Keown in Georgia. And it still has on it a number of candidates from the previous list who still need plenty of help. Everyone on this list can win. They just need your help.

Please help them out. All of them if possible. Our last mailer made a big difference, and many of went on the air for the first time with their ads! From there, the ads produce good polling numbers that attract national donors. But we need to catalyze the process.

Rob Steele, Michigan

My how time flies. John Dingell has been in Congress for 55 years! The all time record for the House. And Dad was in the seat for 23 before that! Now the dynasty could end and evict the 83 year old Dingell who, more than any other Congressman, wrote the health care bill. Dr. Rob Steele, a heart doctor, is opposing him and is only seven points behind! But nobody believes Dingell could lose. The truth is that Steele can win. Help him out.

To help Steele’s campaign, Go Here

Morgan Philpot, Utah

Utah, the most Republican state in the nation, should not have a Democratic Congressman but it does. But this may be Matheson’s last term because he is facing a strong challenge from Morgan Philpot who is only three points behind. It is just this kind of Democratic seat, buried in a heavily Republican district, which keeps Pelosi, Rangel, and Barney Frank in power. Please help Philpot. He urgently needs your help!

To help Philpot’s campaign, Go Here

Mike Keown, Georgia

Democratic incumbent Sanford Bishop gave scholarships to his daughter, his niece, his staffer’s wife, his staffer’s daughter, and other children of close friends of his wife. He needs to be defeated. He returned the money after he was caught — after he was caught. Mike Keown is mounting a stiff challenge and is tied in the polls. Help out Mike and get rid of a member of Congress who is a trifecta: A liberal, a Democrat, and corrupt!

To help Keown’s campaign, Go Here

Beth Anne Rankin, Arkansas

She is running against Mike Ross, the biggest hypocrite in Washington (quite a title!). When he could have killed Obamacare in committee, he voted for it — his was the swing vote. Then, on the floor, he voted no twice. He needs to be defeated. Rankin is a strong conservative voice who worked for Mike Huckabee when he was governor.

To help Rankin’s campaign, Go Here

Go to Dick Morris’s site to see the other candidates that he has highlighted this week who need your help.

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Multiple polls have shown that a significant portion of American voters either consider themselves a part of the Tea Party movement, or at minimum state they relate to the agenda that the Tea Party promotes.

One of the major problems is that most Tea Party members are in favor of limited government and spending, and feel that there is currently little difference between the Republicans and Democrats in Congress.  Many of them espouse a “flip the House” philosophy where by EVERY member of Congress would be replaced, not just Democrats.  It’s this fiscally conservative mindset, as compared to Republican mindset, that has led to many independents, and even Democrats, being attracted to the Tea Party movement.

Dick Morris discusses the myth of conservative vulnerability and explains why in today’s environment being a fiscal conservative is a quality many Americans are attracted to:

Yesterday’s primary victories of O’Donnell in Delaware, and DioGuardi in New York illustrates how the Tea Party is cleansing the Republican Party and installing true believers over professional politicians. It is a healthy trend that will continue to recreate the Party of Reagan.

But the conventional media, instead of hailing this trend, warns that conservatives cannot be elected and bemoans the victory of true believers saying that it is equivalent to handing seats to the Democrats and the liberals. This reasoning, which made sense in other times, is badly flawed in today’s political climate.

…

[T]hese days, social issues are in remission and economic/fiscal problems have, understandably, taken center stage. In this environment, purists of the right have a big advantage because nobody doubts the sincerity with which they embrace the goals of limited government, low taxes, and reduced spending. Politicians of all stripes – including most Democrats – vow allegiance to them as does the overwhelming majority of the electorate. In this environment, the distinctions of left and right give way to the difference between sincerity and insincerity, leaving the voters to judge. With candidates like Sharron Angle in Nevada or Christine O’Donnell in Delaware or DioGuardia in New York, voters don’t have to guess. They know real conservatives when they see them.

Rather than attacking candidates like O’Donnel, the GOP leadership should be embracing them.  It is the Tea Party and other grass-roots conservative movements that have created the huge enthusiasm gap between Republican and Democratic voters, NOT some new found love for the Republican party.

One of the Republican leadership’s greatest fears was that Tea Party candidates would run as third party candidates, not as Republicans, which would in most cases split the vote — handing winnable elections to the Democrats.  The Tea Party backers and candidates did their part, and backed candidates on Republican tickets.  However, the big-government, Republican establishment has not been upholding their end of the bargain.

If the Republican party doesn’t start to embrace the will of the people, the conservative, small-government candidates supported by the Tea Party and other conservative movements, they may find themselves facing 3rd party candidates in 2012.

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Real Clear Politics’ average of polls shows Republicans with a 6 point lead, which is a 25 point reversal from when Democrats led by nearly 20 points last summer.

A new AP poll shows that Republicans lead among likely voters is ten points (53/43) and the AP points to most Americans feeling America is heading in the wrong direction as evidence that the deck is strongly tilted against the Democrats in the upcoming mid-term elections.   In addition, the AP points to the 40-90% higher turnout than expected in the Delaware GOP primary as another indication of what to expect in November.

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey breaks down President Obama’s crumbling approval ratings, which clearly are a factor in the Democrat’s lack of support heading into the November elections:

The news continues to worsen for Obama.  He gets a 42/58 on the economy, a 38/61 on the budget deficit, 40/59 on immigration, , and 42/58 on unemployment.  Republicans outscore Democrats on trust on the economy (46/41), national security (54/37), federal deficit (47/40), taxes (48/42), and job creation (45/42).  And this is in a sample with a 44/40 split for Democrats, with leaners; without leaners, it’s 31/25 for Democrats.  If they can’t get better numbers than this from a six-point lead in the base sample, the Democrats are heading for the woodshed in less than seven weeks.

The question isn’t if the Republicans will gain seats, but how many.  Some analysts claim the GOP will easily take control of both the House and Senate, while others state it is unlikely they will take control of either.   One lesson Republican leaders, candidates and voters should learn from the recent British elections is that early leads in polls are not cause for victory parades.

The two greatest advantages that Republicans have in the upcoming elections are: President Obama’s lagging support, and the much higher enthusiasm among Republican voters — especially conservatives — as compared to the enthusiasm among Democrats.

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Foolishly, most Americans assume that Congressmen actually READ the bills they are voting on and no what’s in it BEFORE they vote on it.  Silly us.

Politico recently reported that NO Democratic incumbents are using health care as one of the platforms they are running on for reelection.  What is supposed to be the crowing achievement of the Democratic party.  A decades old goal that has finally been reached.  The “this one’s for Teddy” accomplishment that will bring America in line with the rest of the civilized world.  Yet, not ONE single Democrat is running on the fact that they passed Obamacare.

The question of why, has to be asked.  Is it because they still haven’t read the bill and don’t want to be caught off guard by questions from voters who actually have read the bill?  Is it because they finally read the bill and realize that it contains a LOT of bad stuff that will raise costs and not keep their promise of “if you like your health care plan you can keep it”?  Is it because premiums are already going up for individuals and small businesses, due to the provisions of the law that go into effect next month?

Maybe it’s because roughly 2/3 of Americans aren’t in favor of the law.  Possibly, it’s because while Democrats took political cover by falsely claiming it would reduce the deficit, but now enough real data (including the docfix that they delayed to get a falsely positive CBO score) has come out to prove that it is far from a deficit reducing law.

Regardless of the reason, Democrats are running away from Obamacare as fast as they can as they campaign for reelection.  That should tell you something.

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey explains how the administrations attempt to front load the ‘good’ stuff in the bill to garner support, has actually already begun to backfire:

After the polls showed that the newly-passed ObamaCare bill remained deeply unpopular with voters, the Obama administration reshuffled the rollout in order to convince Americans what a great deal they would get.  By “front-loading” the most popular provisions to make them effective immediately, the White House hoped that the momentum would shift to support for the one legislative achievement of Barack Obama’s turn — or at least neutralize its negative influence.  Instead, ObamaCare remains as unpopular as ever, and the bill will come due just before the midterms:

Health insurers say they plan to raise premiums for some Americans as a direct result of the health overhaul in coming weeks, complicating Democrats’ efforts to trumpet their signature achievement before the midterm elections.

Aetna Inc., some BlueCross BlueShield plans and other smaller carriers have asked for premium increases of between 1% and 9% to pay for extra benefits required under the law, according to filings with state regulators.

These and other insurers say Congress’s landmark refashioning of U.S. health coverage, which passed in March after a brutal fight, is causing them to pass on more costs to consumers than Democrats predicted.

Even though the bill has passed, which according to Madam Pelosi should allow us to know what’s in it, a dirty secret that most still don’t understand is the incredible control that HHS will have of their health care.  Almost all aspects of insurance, and as a result insurance costs and covered (or not covered) treatments, will be dictated by HHS regulations.  HHS will dictate what insurance plans must contain.  HHS  will dictate how much an insurance company can charge.  HHS will determine whether or not you can keep the plan that you have and like, and CBO analysis shows that the vast majority of Americans will NOT be able to keep the plan they have, even if they like it — contrary to what President Obama promised.

If Democrats believed so strongly in Obamacare that they had no qualms about using parliamentary tricks and dirty politics to get it passed into law, why are they hiding from it now that they are trying to get re-elected?

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Ed Morrissey of Hot Air breaks down the surprising Washington Post/ABC poll:

Three months ago, the WaPo/ABC sample had a nine-point Democratic advantage in the partisan split, with a D/R/I of 34/25/38.  Today’s poll has a D/R/I among registered voters of 31/26/37, with a five-point advantage still being too high and both Democrats and Republicans slightly underrepresented.  Both Rasmussen and Gallup this year have the actual partisan gap at a single point.

…

Obama’s 46/52 is the first underwater rating of his term in office from the Post/ABC poll, which shows readers what creative sampling can do.  He’s been underwater on the economy for most of the year, though, with a term-low 41/57 at the moment.  His numbers haven’t changed much on the deficit or on Iraq, despite his Oval Office speech on the latter.  He gets a 49/45 for following the Bush playbook, from 48/42 in July — hardly an improvement.

In April, WaPo/ABC showed that 39% believed that Obama’s economic policies were making the economy better, while 26% said they were making it worse, and 32% believed they had no effect. In the most recent poll, 30% said they were making the economy better, 33% making it worse, and 36% believe that Obama’s economic policies and hundreds of billions of dollars spent have had no effect on the economy.

In addition to showing failing support for President Obama and his economic policies, there was bad news for Democrats with the mid-term elections less than two months away.

• 40% of registered voters say they have move confidence in Democrats and 38% say they have more confidence in Republicans.  Three months ago Democrats had a 12 point margin. (note, this polls was heavily weighted in favor of registered Democrats)
• 47% of voters said they would vote for the Republican in their Congressional district, and 45% said Democrat.  However, when looking at those that said they were likely to vote, the numbers favored Republicans 53%/40%.
• 55%/39% voters say they would rather have Republicans in control to keep Obama in check, rather than Democrats in charge of Congress to support the President’s agenda — this gap is double what it was three months ago.

The American people clearly no longer believe in the President’s message of hope and change.   After 20 months of hearing the President blame George Bush and the Republicans for everything that goes wrong, even though Democrats have controlled Congress for four years and they had a near unprecedented super majority for Obama’s first year in office, voters are no longer buying what President Obama is selling.  Promise after promise has been broken, from campaign promises about being the most transparent administration ever to not raising taxes on those making less than $200,000 to unemployment not going above 8% if his union-endorsed spending stimulus bill was passed.

People are growing weary of the Campaigner in Chief who relies on the Teleprompter in Chief , and who has failed to become the Commander in Chief and lead this country in a time of great need.

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After Republicans made news several weeks ago by filibustering a vote to open debate on the Financial Regulation Bill, the final passage of the bill was aided by four Republicans who crossed over in support of the bill.  While Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe are liberal Republicans and often vote with the Democrats, it surprised many that Senators Scott Brown and Chuck Grassley also sided with the Democrats on another piece of legislation that passes a large chunk of the American economy over to Government control.

Maybe Brown thought this was the “people’s bill”.  In one of the first true tests of what type of Republican Senator Brown will be, many feel he came up well short of the mark.

Dick Morris explains why this bill is so dangerous, especially when stacked on top of Obamacare:

The bill authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury – a political appointee – to seize any financial company (bank or nonbank) simply because, in his opinion, it is too big to fail and in danger of insolvency.  This power can be used for political retribution, pressure for campaign funding, or any other abuse bureaucratic whim or partisan politics can conceive.  It is a power Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez would love to have!

The legislation also requires that any business that extends credit, in any form, needs to clear the loan instrument in advance with the new consumer protection agency.  The backlog of pending applications will strangle consumer credit.

Now the federal government has effectively taken over about one third of our national economy by passing Obamacare and regulatory reform in almost the same breath.

It’s hard to know exactly where to place this bill on the ‘alarm’ scale.  On the one hand, the bill failed to regulate what many would argue are the institutions that played a major role in the near economic collapse of the US economy, Fannie and Freddie, which also happen to be big financial supporters of the Democratic party.   It was Democrats like Barney Frank and Luann Waters, along with Obama adviser and former CEO of Fannie Mae, that blocked every attempt to impose reasonable regulations on Fannie and Freddie over the last 5-8 years.    Raines was reported to have earned about $90 million in his five years as Fannie Mae CEO, which he later had to partially repay in a settlement related to overstating Fannie’s earning by nearly 50% while he was CEO.

The role of Frank, Waters, Raines and other Democrats in what led up to the financial crisis is important, because the Democrats have used the economic melt down, caused in large part by liberal meddling and regulations, to declare a failure of the free market system and claim it proves that deregulation doesn’t work.  They hide the fact that they not only lowered the capital requirements for Fannie and Freddie and fought all Republican attempts to require levels of capitalization on par with banks that provide loans, but also mandated that  banks give a certain percentage of their loans to people that otherwise would not qualify for a loan.  They forced banks to provide loans to people who were likely to default on the loans, and as a result helped create the sub-prime nightmare that almost destroyed the American financial system.

Now, after liberal meddling created this mess, they say, “the Government is here to save the day” and pass a Financial Regulation Bill that gives the politically appointed Secretary of the Treasury the ability to seize any financial institution that he or she deems to be too large to fail.

Many believe that the true goal of Obamacare is to create an environment where insurance companies cannot remain profitable, and therefore cannot survive, so that the public insurance exchanges can be replaced with what President Obama and other Democrats have openly said is the end goal, which is a single payer, or national health care system.

While some scoff that off as paranoia and conspiracy talk, when you look at how the Democrats have managed to cause a near financial collapse, and use it as a justification for passing a bill that can lead to the takeover of the financial system, those paranoid ramblings start to look a whole lot less paranoid and a whole lot scarier at the same time.

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Photo by Gage Skidmore

Like with his father, Ron Paul, it’s easy to often find yourself saying “did he really just say that” when listening to Rand Paul speak.

Last year, fellow Libertarian Ron Paul was taped talking about how the CIA runs the military, the federal reserve, pretty much the whole country.   He’s been an outspoken proponent of eliminating the IRS, along with the Departments of Education, Energy, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and FEMA to name a few.

The elder Paul also believes in a non-interventionist policy, possibly an isolationist one, and would close all US basis on foreign soil and bring all US troops back on to American soil.

When it comes to Rand Paul, we don’t know nearly as much as we do about Ron.  We know that he has also spoken of eliminating the Department of Education and the Federal reserve.  He’s in favor of closing GITMO and doesn’t believe terrorists should be tried in military tribunals.  Beyond that, we only have bits and pieces of what Rand believes, but it seems that he parallels his father’s positions in many areas.

The problem with Ron, and it appears Rand, is that while they often have a constitutional basis for their positions, when they voice them, they sometimes, for lack of a better word, come off a bit ‘wacko’.

In a recent interview with Rachel Madow, he allowed himself to get trapped.  The Talking Points Memo explains what he meant while appearing to oppose the civil rights act:

“Well, there’s 10 — there’s 10 different — there’s 10 different titles, you know, to the Civil Rights Act, and nine out of 10 deal with public institutions and I’m absolutely in favor of,” he told Maddow deep in their 15-minute interview. “One deals with private institutions, and had I been around, I would have tried to modify that.”

Got that? Rand Paul agrees with most of the Civil Rights Act, but not the part that deals with private businesses. And he won’t say whether or not that one part of the bill would have been a deal-breaker if he had been in Congress when the bill was up for a vote.

That’s it, essentially. Paul said many, many times in the interview with Maddow that he is not a racist, and that his motivation for saying what he’s saying about the civil rights act is not race, but rather allowing business owners their right to “free speech,” which in this case is the freedom to discriminate.

“Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent? Should we limit racists from speaking?” Paul told Maddow. “I don’t want to be associated with those people, but I also don’t want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that’s one of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn’t mean we approve of it.”

When it comes to spending taxpayer dollars, Paul says he is all for laws requiring equal accommodation for everybody.

This is classic Paul, whether Ron or Rand.  They have very strong convictions about individual and state’s rights, and when expressing those convictions you never know what exactly might come out of their mouth.

J.E. Dyer of the Optimistic Conservative wrote on Hot Air about the contrarian, Libertarian Rand Paul and two recent incidents that might haunt Paul between now and November:

There have been two incidents now, since the Kentucky primary, in which Rand Paul has failed to prostrate himself automatically before a political shibboleth.  One concerned the Civil Rights Act, the intent of which Paul has expressed full support for.  His quarrel is with the element of the Civil Rights Act that authorizes the federal government to regulate private businesses.

The other is Paul’s criticism of Obama’s “boot on the neck” comment about BP, and of the general societal attitude in the US that everything must be litigated and litigable fault assigned for any bad thing that happens.

The question we are left with is whether Rand Paul is going to be a blessing or a curse for the Tea Party.  After winning his primary battle, he quickly proclaimed it a victory for the Tea Party.  But, is it?  The Tea Party movement is already demonized by the main stream media.  More times than not, with outrageous assertions, if not out right lies.  When a self-proclaimed communist flies a plane into an IRS building, the headlines read “will unstable man’s attempt to destroy an IRS building spell doom for the Tea Party.”  The fact that there was no ties between the Tea Party and the left-wing whack job was irrelevant, because it was an opportunity to demonize the movement.

Now with Rand Paul being the new ‘face’ of the Tea Party candidate, every word he utters, every position he takes, every non-populist view he espouses will be tied to the Tea Party.

Blessing or Curse?  While it will take months to know for sure, there is one thing we can be sure of and that is that the main stream media will use every misstep that Rand Paul makes as chance to tear town the Tea Party movement.

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Rasmussen also found that both a national sales tax and taxes on junk food and soft drinks remain very unpopular.  These are two taxes that have been associated with the Democrats in Washington.  The justification for the junk food taxes is that these foods are unhealthy and therefore the nanny (US Government) will penalize you for eating it.  The national sales tax or VAT tax is expected to be pushed as the solution to pay for the massive deficit that Obama, Pelosi and Reid have created over the last 15 months.

It was reported last week that 47% of Americans will pay NO federal income tax.  Yet a new Rasmussen poll shows that the vast majority of Americans (66%/25%) believe America is already overtaxed.

Allahpundit of Hot Air breaks down the numbers:

If you think the “over 100K” crowd is grumbly now, check back with them after a few years of Obamanomics. As for the “under 50K” group, the amazing number really isn’t the “less than fair” column; after all, aside from the occasional hyperrich progressive imbecile, no one believes he or she should be paying more tax. The amazing number is, of course, the “more than fair” column. Surely this group forms the bulk of that 47 percent that pays no federal income tax — in fact, a couple with two kids making slightly over $50,000 can now achieve zero federal tax liability — and yet, somehow, 36 percent still say they’re paying too much. Why?

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2008 House Election Results

Ok, let’s first say that even Silver says this a low percentage possibility, but based on the Rasmussen generic ballot 79 seats could be the number the Republicans pick up.

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight breaks it down:

If the House popular vote were exactly tied, we’d expect the Democrats to lose “only” 30 seats on average, which would be enough for them to retain majority control. It would take about a 2.5 point loss in the popular vote for them to be as likely as not to lose control of the chamber. So Democrats probably do have a bit of a cushion: this is the good news for them.

Their bad news is that the House popular vote (a tabulation of the actual votes all around the country) and the generic ballot (an abstraction in the form of a poll) are not the same thing — and the difference usually tends to work to Democrats’ detriment. Although analysts debate the precise magnitude of the difference, on average the generic ballot has overestimated the Democrats’ performance in the popular vote by 3.4 points since 1992. If the pattern holds, that means that a 2.3-point deficit in generic ballot polls would translate to a 5.7 point deficit in the popular vote — which works out to a loss of 51 seats, according to our regression model.

…

And what if, for example, the Rasmussen case comes into being? Rasmussen has the Democrats losing the generic ballot by 9 points (and has had similar numbers for awhile). A 9-point loss in the House popular vote would translate into a projected 65-seat loss for Democrats. Or, if we adjust the Rasmussen poll to account for the fact that the Democrats’ performance in the popular vote tends to lag the generic ballot, it works out to a 12.4-point loss in the popular vote, which implies a loss of 79 seats!

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Greta Van Susteran had a great interview with Harry Reid.  During the interview, Greta talks about the Scott Brown victory.  Sticking to the Democratic talking points, Reid threw Coakley under the bus, making a quip about her three week vacation.  Greta quickly countered by explaining how Coakley was up huge in the polls right up until Reid and Ben Nelson cut a backroom deal subsidizing FOREVER all increases in Medicaid costs that Nebraska incurred due to Obamacare.

Harry Reid then attempted to claim that the deal was great for America and that he only made the deal with Nelson because he knew that in the end every state would get the same special deal.

Go to Gretawire to view the entire interview.  It’s worth taking a few minutes to watch the full interview.

Allapundit of Hot Air comments on Reid’s ridiculous comments, but more importantly reports on another Masscare failure:

[Reid] talking about how the Cornhusker Kickback was “terrific for our country.” Meanwhile, in other news today, Massachusetts insurers have temporarily stopped writing new policies because the state won’t let them raise premiums. Nothing to see here, move along.

It’s bad enough that Harry Reid cut the backroom deals with Nelson, along with the deals for Florida, Louisiana, Vermont, Massachusetts and others.  However, the fact that he can stand there and lie, and that he actually thinks that voters will believe him, is almost beyond belief.

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From the National Review Online, comes details of this latest abuse of power by the Democrats:

Second: On average, Democratic districts received one-and-a-half times as many awards as Republican ones. Democratic districts also received two-and-a-half times more stimulus dollars than Republican districts ($122,127,186,509 vs. $46,139,592,268). Republican districts also received smaller awards on average. (The average dollars awarded per Republican district is $260,675,663, while the average dollars awarded per Democratic district is $471,533,539.)

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air says that on top of the the Democratic cronyism, the ‘questionable’ jobs saved numbers are declining, just at the time when Vice President Biden claimed we were supposed to see the greatest impact:

Not only that, but the number of jobs “created or saved” has actually declined in the last quarter, leaving the amount of money spent per job at a cool … $286,000. As for the accusation of political favoritism, I’ll defer to de Rugy since she’s the economist.

This latest abuse of power likely won’t surprise too many Americans.  The Gateway Pundit today reported on a new Gallup poll that shows 53% of Americans believe that the Democratic leaders in Congress abused their power in jamming Obamacare through, while only 40% believed it was an appropriate use of power.

So Mr. President, is this what you meant when you said you would change the way Washington works?

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The Republicans found a provision that guaranteed Pell grants into the future without providing funding for them, leaving that to a future Congress.  As this provision does not reduce spending, it was not eligible to be in the reconciliation bill.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air touches on two points related to sending the bill back to the house:

If that’s all that gets struck from the bill, the only effect will be to lengthen the debate on health care.  Obviously, that’s exactly what the Republicans want.  With 62% of voters wanting the GOP to keep fighting against ObamaCare, their leadership has no reason to let up.

The big surprise here is that House leadership allowed themselves to screw up on minor points.  The process of reconciliation isn’t that arcane, and they certainly had the time to double-check their work.  They’ve been working on this strategy since Scott Brown won his election in mid-January.  To have the bill boomerang back because of Pell grants in a health-care bill is an embarrassment.

While this is mostly a delaying tactic by the Republicans, there is some significance to the delaying tactics.

First, a CBS poll released yesterday, which was conducted in the two days leading up to the House health bill vote, showed that 62% of American, including 41% of Democrats, wanted the GOP to continue to fight against Obamacare.  In addition, that survey showed 57%/18% that people believed that regardless of the Democrat’s claims of a great CBO score, that the bill would in fact increase the deficit.

Second, House and Senate Democrats had not only been working on the Reconciliation strategy since the Brown victory, but had spent weeks leading up to the vote working directly with Senate Parliamentarian Alan Frumin to insure that errors like this were not contained in the bill.  So, not only is it an embarrassment that these small errors existed, but also highlights the fact that the Democrats piggy backed a takeover of the student loan program onto Obamacare.

Finally, in addition to the minor victory of sending the bill back to the house for a new vote, and as a result keeping the ‘process’ in the news cycle, yesterday’s GOP tactics served another purpose.  The Republicans put forth close to three dozen amendments.  While they had no real hope that any would pass, many of the amendments were put forth, because voting against them will look bad for vulnerable Democratic Senators in November.  For instance, voting against an amendment that would forbid raiding Medicare to pay for the Obamacare bill.

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President Obama and the far left have been reinvigorated with the passing of Obamacare.  While only a few weeks ago it seemed that Obama’s far left agenda had been stalemated and unlikely to have any real chance of being pushed through Congress, many believe that has now changed.

As Nancy Pelosi so famously said, “we will have to pass the bill to see what’s in it”.  Unfortunately, for the American voters, that has been the truth.  Many lies have been told about Obamacare, such as the President stating over and over that if you like your insurance plan, you can keep it.  Those that have read the bills know that isn’t the case, since it requires that once your plan changes (premium amount, deductible change, any coverage change — like a change in Rx benefits) require that you must move to a plan that is exchange-qualified.  That means for most people, once that regulati0n goes into affect, at their next plan renewal (when in most cases, something in the plan changes) they will have to move to an exchange-qualified plan and CANNOT keep the insurance plan they like.

It is likely that there will be a short-term bump in public opinion for Obamacare, as the President starts his PR campaign, which he will soon take on the road.  President Obama will keep focusing on the small number of popular consumer protections that go into effect quickly, while either not mentioning, or misstating the many negative regulations that will soon go into effect and will be hugely unpopular once voters understand what they mean.

However, it’s important to note that while a Gallup poll released yesterday did show a bump in public support for Obamacare, a new Bloomberg survey shows that a majority of Americans believe that health care is a private matter and that Obamacare is a federal take over of health care.  It also found that six out of ten Americans believe that individuals should be responsible to make sure their health care needs are met.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air discusses the Bloomberg Survey:

If Democrats felt heartened after yesterday’s Gallup poll showing a plurality of support for their new ObamaCare plan, Bloomberg’s survey should bring them back to Earth.  The survey asked over a thousand adults their opinions of the ObamaCare bill during and after its passage, and like almost every poll taken in the last several months, a majority of respondents opposed it.  Moreover, a majority also consider it a government takeover of the American health-care system.

…

It also presents another problem for Democrats, which is that they will own every failure within the American health-care system from this point forward.  Had Republicans successfully blocked ObamaCare, they would have owned them, but now it all falls on the Democrats.

The fact that people can’t really keep their insurance if they like it, is just one aspect of Obamacare that will likely result in a backlash from voters. It’s one thing for people to say “yes, everyone should be covered, if it doesn’t change my coverage”, but that sentiment changes very quickly when people realize that their insurance coverage will soon change drastically, and for many Americans that will also mean higher premiums.

Since Obama, Pelosi and Reid know they have to ride the wave of positive press and re-energized liberal base, expect a major push to pass the remaining big, liberal agenda items.  What can we expect to see a major push to pass?

Immigration reform:  They started talking about this last week in order to wrap up some needed votes on the Health care bill, but this isn’t just about buying votes for Obamacare.  The Democrats see offering amnesty to illegal immigrants as an immediate increase in the size of the block of voters that automatically vote Democrat.  Most of the illegals given amnesty will receive some form of government subsidy, including for Obamacare, and therefore will want to keep the Democrats in office in order to keep their entitlements.

Cap and Trade:  Senator Kerry has already said that the Senate needs to move quickly to pass Cap and Trade.  They realize that weekly more cracks are forming in the ‘science’ surrounding global warming, or climate change as it’s now called, and therefore they must strike quickly.  Like with Obamacare, the American public does not believe Cap and Trade should be passed, but after just passing one major piece of legislation in contradiction of the will of the people, expect a major push to pass another.

Card Check:  President Obama owes the unions his election, a fact that Andy Stern of SEIU keeps publicly reminding him, when he says that the SEIU spent over $60 million to get President Obama elected.  Unions are one of the main contributors to the Democratic party.   Union membership in private sector companies is near an all time low, which is troubling to both union leaders and Democrats that count on that major source of funding and votes.  Card Check, or Employee Free Choice Act as the Democrats falsely named it, will eliminate the secret ballot and as a result, bring back ugly intimidation by union organizers.

These are not the only items on the far-left wish list, but they are among the most important to the liberal base and the most damaging to the United States.   Like Obamacare, these have been on the liberal wish list for a while, and the only chance of passing them is with the type of massive majority that the Democrats hold in Congress.  Like with Obamacare, they will push to get them passed quickly, hoping to leave enough time between the passage of these bills and the November elections, counting on these unpopular bills to no longer be in the public’s focus when they go to the voting booth.

In the coming days, I will post more information on each of these upcoming pieces of legislation.

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Their plan was to argue that the following statement by Steny Hoyer indicated that the Reconciliation bill violated the Congressional Budget Act Of 1974, which states that any bill that contains “recommendations with respect to” Social Security, will be out of order and therefor ineligible for budget reconciliation.

“The Congressional Budget Office estimate of the health care legislation shows an increase in Social Security revenues… CBO projects that the resulting increase in wages will generate $29 billion in additional FICA contributions to the Social Security Trust Fund.” (“Health Care Reform Update,”

Late Monday, Alan Frumin, the Senate Parliamentarian ruled in favor of the Democrats when the Republicans made the argument that delaying the Cadillac tax would impact Social Security, which would constitute “recommendations with respect to” Social Security, there by making the House bill ineligible for reconciliation.

Senate Republicans Monday afternoon argued to Frumin that a provision of the reconciliation package approved by the House violated Section 310g of the Budget Act. Had Frumin ruled in the Republicans’ favor, the bill would have been stripped of its reconciliation status.

Frumin heard arguments from Democratic and GOP Senate staff, and he ultimately ruled in favor of the Democrats. The Republicans argued that a provision dealing with the excise tax on “Cadillac” insurance plans impacted Social Security. The Budget Act does not permit reconciliation legislation to affect Social Security.

Most considered this a long shot, as it was a weak and indirect effect on Social Security, so therefore the ruling isn’t too surprising. The reason the GOP wanted this one is that it would make the entire bill out of order, where most other points of order that the GOP wins would only require that the specific clause or language (that is ruled out of order) be removed from the reconciliation bill.

It’s important to note several things.

First, even if the reconciliation bill was ruled out of order, the Senate bill passed yesterday will still become law when President Obama signs it tomorrow morning.

Second, any changes that are made to the House reconciliation bill, which the Senate is set to consider, would require the bill to be sent back to the House for another vote.  The bill that the Senate ultimately votes on must be the exact language that the House passed.  So, whether a change comes from a ruling by the Senate Parliamentarian, a change made by Senate Democrats, or an amendment that is passed (whether offered by Democrats or Republicans), it will require the bill to go back to the House for another vote.

Third, it is also possible that this could happen multiple times, which is the “ping ponging” that reporters and Congressmen sometimes refer to in articles or interviews.

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President Obama set the tone for both Houses of Congress, when leading up to the passage of the first stimulus bill, his response to Republican leadership concerns about not being involved in drafting the stimulus bill was simply to state that he didn’t have to involve them, because as he said “I won”.

Dick Morris has been warning Democrats for a while that there will be a very steep price for defying the will of the American public.  He now says they will pay a heavy price in November for that defiance:

The Democratic Party’s decision to deform our health care system in the name of reforming it amounts to a suicide pact. With America decrying the legislation by 60-40 margins, the legislators lined up and dutifully drank the Kool-Aid.

…

The anger of the voters at this total disregard of public opinion will power Republican candidates throughout the nation and will impel one of the greatest reversals of Congressional alignment in history.

But the aftershock of this political earthquake is yet to come. It will be upon us in the fall when Congress must decide whether to proceed with the Medicare cuts (particularly to cut in doctors’ reimbursement rates) or to postpone or cancel them and add the cost to the federal deficit.

…

This vote transforms the political landscape in a way that we have not seen in our lifetimes and the results will be cataclysmic for the Democratic Party

The next seven months will be interesting.  Starting today, the Democrats will begin selling the benefits of Obamacare in an attempt to mitigate the damage in the mid-term elections come November.   Only time will tell how successful they will be with their sales job.

As to paying for their defiance, one has to now wonder about the Stupak bloc.  They claimed that their principles could not be compromised.  Bart Stupak said that if the Senate language, which provides for the public funding of abortion, was not amended then Stupak and his group could not and would not vote for it.  They did.

The White House wrote them a “here’s some cover for the mid-term elections” Executive Order, but they know, and the American public will soon know, that the Executive Order does nothing to prevent the public funding of abortion that Stupak has been decrying for months.

Not too many people thought the President could get this many Congressmen to fall on their swords for him.  If Dick Morris is right, the dismantling of the Democratic majority might be Obama’s greatest accomplishment.

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In essence, it seems that reconciliation cannot be used to impact social security in any way. However, in the reconciliation bill the House Democrats state that they will raise additional revenues for social security.

Presumably, this was added as one of the many ‘marketing’ clauses in the bill, which allows Democrats to tout the benefits as they campaign leading up to the mid-term elections in November.

Ace of Ace of Spades explains this last ditch effort:

So the GOP’s floating of this objection is an 11th hour attempt to make House Democrats realize reconciliation won’t happen, so as to make them vote “No.”

Here’s the argument:

DON STEWART, McCONNELL SPOKESMAN: “Republicans have been trying to set up a meeting with Senate Democrats since yesterday to discuss this fatal point of order but have been met with nothing but silence. We suspect Democrats are slow walking us so as to have the House vote first. Since Senate Democrats refuse to meet with us and the arliamentarian, we’ve informed our colleagues in the House that we believe the bill they’re now considering violates the clear language of Section 310g of the Congressional Budget Act, and the entire reconciliation bill is subject to a point of order and rejection in the Senate should it pass the House.”

BACKGROUND

DEMOCRAT LEADERSHIP RELEASE: “The Congressional Budget Office estimate of the health care legislation shows an increase in Social Security revenues… CBO projects that the resulting increase in wages will generate $29 billion in additional FICA contributions to the Social Security Trust Fund.” (“Health Care Reform Update,” Office of Rep. Steny Hoyer, 3/21/10)

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET ACT: “LIMITATION ON CHANGES TO THE SOCIAL

SECURITY ACT.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any reconciliation bill or reconciliation resolution reported pursuant to a concurrent resolution on the budget agreed to under section 301 or 304, or a joint resolution pursuant to section 258C of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, or any amendment thereto or conference report thereon, that contains recommendations with respect to the old-age, survivors, and disability insurance program established under title II of the Social Security Act.” (Congressional Budget Act Of 1974, Sec. 310g, P. 31)

So, I think, the attempt to divert SS payments into this bill is illegal (and of course it’s a gimmick in the first place to get a better CBO number, once again double-counting a revenue source) and so the reconciliation will fail.

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air is one of those that remains skeptical:

If this was something other than a hail mary, wouldn’t the GOP have floated it yesterday or the day before, when waverers hadn’t yet tied their own hands by publicly committing to yes? It feels desperate, even if there’s something to it, and no one wants to run away from an enemy who they know is desperate. Which is another way of saying don’t count on any Stupakers getting cold feet over this.

Former Senator Rick Santorum is making a case that Harry Reid not only knows that the entire reconciliation bill could get tossed, but that it may very well be Reid’s plan.

Mitch McConnell and other Republican leaders in the Senate have been trying to get Reid to have the Parliamentarian make a ruling on the social security issue.  Reid has refused to get such a ruling:

“Now here’s the interesting thing,” Santorum said. “Mitch McConnell and the Republican leadership have been pleading with [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid to meet with the parliamentarian to get a ruling on this before the House votes. Senate Democrats have refused to meet with the parliamentarian to get a resolution on this issue. So as a result, there’s still the open question.”

Asked if Senate Democrats were sandbagging House Democrats, Santorum said: “My old friend Dick Armey used to say, when he was the Republican [majority] leader and he would talk about the Democrats, he said, ‘The Democrats are the opposition, the Senate is the enemy.’ In this case, the Senate truly is sandbagging House Democrats who are voting for this thinking it’s going to be fixed, and it’s not going to be fixed.

Santorum said the errant attempt at using reconciliation is being done at the behest of the president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

So, it would seem that Reid may very well know that there is a substantial chance that the entire reconciliation bill could be tossed due to the social security issue, which would leave health care where he wanted it all along — the Senate health care being the law of the land, full of all the kick backs and special deals.

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Stupak claims that this executive order will address all concerns about public funds being used to pay for abortion, but Stupak did not address the mandate that all men and women buying insurance from exchange-qualified health care plans will be required to pay $1 a month (or more) that will go into a pool to pay for abortions within that plan.

Further, that Executive Order can be rescinded by President Obama or a future President, and more importantly does not trump legislation enacted by Congress.  Therefore, the Executive Order does nothing except give Stupak cover in the upcoming mid-term elections.

The following is a draft of Obama’s Executive Order posted on Major Garrett’s Foxnews blog:

EXECUTIVE ORDER

- – - – - – -

ENSURING ENFORCEMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ABORTION RESTRICTIONS IN THE PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (approved March ¬¬__, 2010), I hereby order as follows:

Section 1. Policy.

Following the recent passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“the Act”), it is necessary to establish an adequate enforcement mechanism to ensure that Federal funds are not used for abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered), consistent with a longstanding Federal statutory restriction that is commonly known as the Hyde Amendment. The purpose of this Executive Order is to establish a comprehensive, government-wide set of policies and procedures to achieve this goal and to make certain that all relevant actors—Federal officials, state officials (including insurance regulators) and health care providers—are aware of their responsibilities, new and old.

The Act maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to the newly-created health insurance exchanges. Under the Act, longstanding Federal laws to protect conscience (such as the Church Amendment, 42 U.S.C. §300a-7, and the Weldon Amendment, Pub. L. No. 111-8, §508(d)(1) (2009)) remain intact and new protections prohibit discrimination against health care facilities and health care providers because of an unwillingness to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.

Numerous executive agencies have a role in ensuring that these restrictions are enforced, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Section 2. Strict Compliance with Prohibitions on Abortion Funding in Health Insurance Exchanges. The Act specifically prohibits the use of tax credits and cost-sharing reduction payments to pay for abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered) in the health insurance exchanges that will be operational in 2014. The Act also imposes strict payment and accounting requirements to ensure that Federal funds are not used for abortion services in exchange plans (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered) and requires state health insurance commissioners to ensure that exchange plan funds are segregated by insurance companies in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, OMB funds management circulars, and accounting guidance provided by the Government Accountability Office.

I hereby direct the Director of OMB and the Secretary of HHS to develop, within 180 days of the date of this Executive Order, a model set of segregation guidelines for state health insurance commissioners to use when determining whether exchange plans are complying with the Act’s segregation requirements, established in Section 1303 of the Act, for enrollees receiving Federal financial assistance. The guidelines shall also offer technical information that states should follow to conduct independent regular audits of insurance companies that participate in the health insurance exchanges. In developing these model guidelines, the Director of OMB and the Secretary of HHS shall consult with executive agencies and offices that have relevant expertise in accounting principles, including, but not limited to, the Department of the Treasury, and with the Government Accountability Office. Upon completion of those model guidelines, the Secretary of HHS should promptly initiate a rulemaking to issue regulations, which will have the force of law, to interpret the Act’s segregation requirements, and shall provide guidance to state health insurance commissioners on how to comply with the model guidelines.

Section 3. Community Health Center Program.

The Act establishes a new Community Health Center (CHC) Fund within HHS, which provides additional Federal funds for the community health center program. Existing law prohibits these centers from using federal funds to provide abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered), as a result of both the Hyde Amendment and longstanding regulations containing the Hyde language. Under the Act, the Hyde language shall apply to the authorization and appropriations of funds for Community Health Centers under section 10503 and all other relevant provisions. I hereby direct the Secretary of HHS to ensure that program administrators and recipients of Federal funds are aware of and comply with the limitations on abortion services imposed on CHCs by existing law. Such actions should include, but are not limited to, updating Grant Policy Statements that accompany CHC grants and issuing new interpretive rules.

Section 4. General Provisions.

(a) Nothing in this Executive Order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect: (i) authority granted by law or presidential directive to an agency, or the head thereof; or (ii) functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This Executive Order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This Executive Order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity against the United States, its departments, agencies, entities, officers, employees or agents, or any other person.

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Back in December, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius explained that the Senate bill’s language used an accounting procedure (accounting trick) to provide funding for abortion:

“And I would say that the Senate language, which was negotiated by Senators Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray, who are very strong defenders of women’s health services and choices for women, take a big step forward from where the House left it with the Stupak amendment, and I think do a good job making sure there are choices for women, making sure there are going to be some plan options [that pay for abortions],” Sebelius said then.

“There would be an accounting procedure, but everybody in the exchange would do the same thing, whether you’re male or female, whether you’re 75 or 25, you would all set aside a portion of your premium that would go into a fund, and it would not be earmarked for anything. It would be a separate account that everyone in the exchange would pay,” Sebelius admitted about the abortion funding.”It is a bit confusing. But it’s really an accounting measure that would apply across the board”

It’s due to the fact that the Senate bill does provide for public funding for abortion (through a mandate for everyone in exchange qualifying policies to pay at least $1 a month that will go into a pool to pay for abortions) that has resulted in Stupak and some others refusing to vote for the Senate bill.

As I have been preparing this article, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has reported that some news agencies (term used loosely) are stating that Stupak is now a yes vote:

It’s certainly a betrayal of his oft-proclaimed pro-life principles, however.  So far, the news has been reported by MS-NBC on its broadcast and website (as a banner headline) as “sources say,” and reported similarly by C-SPAN, but as of this moment, no written report has surfaced with any details.

This could be a false report, but it’s been no secret for the last few days that Stupak has worked hard to find a way to vote for this bill.  We’ll see if the promise of an executive order from Barack Obama did the trick.

Since Bart Stupak appears to be a very smart guy, it now appears he is just looking for some political cover that would allow him to vote with his party, even if it goes against the principles he has been saying he wouldn’t compromise.

Red State published the following letter from the Conference of Catholic Bishops that describes why the executive order is nothing more that a farce aimed at freeing up Stupak’s block to vote for the Senate bill:

We’ve consulted with legal experts on the specific idea of resolving the abortion funding problems in the Senate bill through executive order. We know Members have been looking into this in good faith, in the hope of limiting the damage done by abortion provisions in the bill. We believe, however, that it would not be fair to withhold what our conclusion was, as it may help members in assessing the options before them:

“One proposal to address the serious problem in the Senate health care bill on abortion funding, specifically the direct appropriating of new funds that bypass the Hyde amendment, is to have the President issue an executive order against using these funds for abortion. Unfortunately, this proposal does not begin to address the problem, which arises from decades of federal appellate rulings that apply the principles of Roe v. Wade to federal health legislation. According to these rulings, such health legislation creates a statutory requirement for abortion funding, unless Congress clearly forbids such funding. That is why the Hyde amendment was needed in 1976, to stop Medicaid from funding 300,000 abortions a year. The statutory mandate construed by the courts would override any executive order or regulation. This is the unanimous view of our legal advisors and of the experts we have consulted on abortion jurisprudence. Only a change in the law enacted by Congress, not an executive order, can begin to address this very serious problem in the legislation.”

Richard Doerflinger
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

If in fact that Pelosi needs the votes of the Stupak block, combined with the fact that neither Pelosi or Reid have been willing to give an inch to Stupak on changing the public funding language in the Senate Bill that the House is set to pass, you have to wonder what other deal has been made with Stupak to buy his vote, considering the executive order will apparently do nothing to block the public funding of abortion.

Update:

Multiple news agencies are reporting that one of the Stupak holdouts, Marcy Kaptur, has switched to a yes vote:

Bad news for ObamaCare opponents.  Marcy Kaptur, one of Stupak’s bloc of pro-life holdouts, announced that she’s voting yes:

Kaptur claims that the President and HHS Secretary will work to ensure current federal law on abortion funding is maintained.

Looks like the Representatives in the Stupak bloc are simply looking for any shred of cover that will allow them to vote yes on Obamacare.

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As the day progressed, reports began to surface that Pelosi might still be short and that President Obama was considering issuing an executive order regarding the public funding for abortion.  The goal of the executive order would be to win the votes of Bart Stupak (D-MI) and nine other pro-life Democrats that won’t vote for the Senate bill while it contains public funding for abortion.

This evening, Gateway pundit is reporting that Pelosi remains short.  While we previously reported on Space and Matheson declaring their no votes, the news about Davis and about Clinton being brought in to make calls:

Glenn Reynolds reported– REPS. SPACE & MATHESON WILL BOTH VOTE NO. I’m also getting email reports that Rep. Lincoln Davis’s (D-TN) office is saying he will vote no, though I haven’t been able to find a published report to that effect.

There are reports that the socialists democrats even recruited Bill Clinton to make phone calls.

Gather.com has news that CNN is reporting that President Obama has recruited Bill Clinton to call undecided Democrats and try and convince them to vote yes for Obamacare:

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Ed Morrissey of Hot Air lays out a couple reasons that Pelosi may have dumped the deem-and-pass strategy:

So what does this mean?  Hard to say.  It could be that the heat on Democrats for using DemonPass made it too difficult to hold onto votes; Pelosi may have calculated that she’d net more votes if she split the bills properly.  On the other hand, it could also mean that Pelosi has all the votes she needs and no longer needs the self-executing rule to get the bill out of the House.

Based on reports from the people and news agencies following the vote account, along with comments from House members, it would seem that Pelosi now has enough votes to not only dump the deem-and-pass strategy, but also not cave into Stupak and the pro-life Democrats who want her to add language to force the Senate to remove their public funding for abortion that is currently in the Senate health care bill.

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For instance, they are instructed not to use the total of 23 million people that will still be uninsured once the plan is in place, but instead to say 95% are covered. They say that 95% insured sounds better than 23 million uninsured. Also, the memo stated that saying that there would still be 23 million people uninsured after Obamacare is fully in force, would make President Obama’s statement to the joint sessions of Congress in September look bad, when he said that there were 30 million uninsured, which is why they needed to pass Obamacare.

While the memo warned in general about not getting into the specifics of CBO analysis numbers, it specifically warned that staffers and their bosses (the Congressmen) should not discuss the Medicare doc fix at all.  The memo stated that they would pass legislation with the doc fix in it after Obamacare was passed, but they did not include it in the Obamacare bill, because it would destroy the bills deficit neutrality.

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey has made the scanned memo available here.

Democrats in Congress are claiming the memo did not come from the Democratic leadership.  The Talking Points Memo has more details:

A senior Democratic leadership aide told TPMDC in an interview the memo, printed by Politico and leading the Drudge Report this afternoon a few days ahead of the health care vote Sunday, is “a hoax.”

“We have checked with every Democratic office, no one has ever seen it. It did not come out of a Democratic office,” the aide said, adding that media outlets printing the memo have not checked with leadership offices if the memo is authentic. A second Democratic leadership aide confirmed the memo was not sent by the Democrats. A third Democratic aide also said the memo is fake, citing the “draft” stamp and saying no one uses such things.

“If this were a Democratic communications person who wrote this, they should be fired, because this looks like Republican talking points,” the third Democratic aide told TPMDC.

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In that article, I outlined two major manipulations that President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have been utilizing to force the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to score the bill as costing less than one trillion dollars in the first ten years, and reducing the deficit during that same time frame.

The ‘manipulations’ that I highlighted, along with those I didn’t, might be the greatest scam or fraud ever perpetrated on American citizens in our countries history.

The two manipulations that I focused on were the ten years of tax revenue vs. only six years of Obamacare expenses, and Pelosi and Reid blocking all attempts to pass the Medicare ‘doctors fix’, until after the CBO scored the reconciliation bill and Obamacare is passed.

Unfortunately, with CBS and other news agencies touting the “CBO certified” numbers and trumpeting how Obamacare will reduce the deficit, many Americans don’t understand the true cost or that the CBO summary numbers are meaningless, because of the manipulative limitations that the Democrats required the CBO to follow.

The Weekly Standard breaks down the real cost of the bill:

For a variety of reasons, this tally doesn’t remotely reflect the bill’s real ten-year costs.  First, it includes 2010 as the initial year.  As most people are well aware, 2010 has now been underway for some time.  Therefore, the CBO would normally count 2011 as the first year of its analysis, just as it counted 2010 as the first year when analyzing the initial House health bill in the middle of 2009.  But under strict instructions from Democratic leaders, and over strong objections from Republicans, the CBO dutifully scored 2010 as the first year of the latest version of Obamacare.  If the clock were started in 2011, the first full year that the bill could possibly be in effect, the CBO says that the bill’s ten-year costs would be $1.2 trillion.

But even that wouldn’t come close to reflecting the bill’s true costs.  The CBO projects that over the next four years, less than two percent of the bill’s alleged “ten year” costs would hit:  just $17 billion of the $940 billion in costs that the Democrats are claiming.  In fact, the costs through President Obama’s entire presidency, should he be reelected, would be $336 billion.  What would the president leave behind for his successor?  According to the CBO, he would leave behind costs of $837 billion during his successor’s first term alone.  If his successor were to serve a second term, he or she would inherit a cool $2.0 trillion in Obamacare costs — about six times its costs during Obama’s own tenure.  This legislation is a ticking time-bomb.

To see the bill’s true first-decade costs, we need to start the clock when the costs would actually start in any meaningful way: in 2014.  The CBO says that Obamacare would cost $2.0 trillion in the bill’s real first decade (from 2014 to 2023) — and much more in the decades to come.

But $2.0 trillion wouldn’t be the total ten-year costs.  Instead, that would merely be the “gross cost of coverage provisions.”  Based on earlier incarnations of the proposed overhaul, the total costs would be about a third higher (the exact number can’t be gleaned from the CBO’s analysis, which is only preliminary and is not a full scoring) — making the total price-tag between $2.5 and $3 trillion over the bill’s real first decade.

How would we pay for all of this?  According to the CBO, by diverting $1.1 trillion away from already barely-solvent Medicare and spending it on Obamacare, and by increasing taxes on the American people by over $1 trillion.  Among the Medicare cuts would be cuts of $25,000 in Medicare Advantage benefits per enrollee — up from $21,000 in the previous scoring.

That is the time based manipulation and massive cuts to Medicare.  Here is why Pelosi and Reid refused to pass a new ‘doctors fix’, even though the last one will expire on April 1st, resulting in a 21% cut in Medicare reimbursements to doctors.  All in the name of getting a good, if completely fictional, CBO score:

We’d also pay for this through increased deficits.  Under strict instructions from the Democrats, the CBO gave Obamacare credit for over $400 billion (from 2014 to 2023) in phony “savings” that would allegedly result from cutting doctor’s payments under Medicare by over 20 percent and never raising them back up.  As the CBO notes, one of two things could happen:  Congress could either follow through on these severe pay cuts — in which case doctors would view all Medicare patients as if they have the plague — or, Congress could eliminate these pay cuts — as everyone in Washington expects to have happen under the so-called “doc fix” — in which case the CBO projects that this bill would raise deficits by over $100 billion from 2017 to 2019 alone.

Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) appeared on Fox and Friends and explains how the CBO score and deficit reduction numbers that Pelosi and other Democrats touted yesterday have nothing to do with the real costs:

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air comments on the IRS expansion buried in Obamacare:

We’ve heard the double-counting argument (and it’s a good one), but the IRS expansion makes for a better, more immediate argument. Do we need the IRS checking on us every month to enforce the health-insurance mandate? Do Americans think hiring an additional 15,000 IRS agents to get even more involved in our lives is a great idea for reform?

As if all of this wasn’t bad enough, the rumblings are growing that the Senate may not even pass the reconciliation bill.  Instead, they will simply let the House pass the current Senate bill, or should I say “deem it passed” and then refuse to take up the House reconciliation bill in the Senate.   Leaving tax payers not only with the massive increase to the deficit, but also all of the special deals the Senate bill contains.

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The gang of three (Obama, Pelosi and Reid) are guilty of what is tantamount to lying to the American public.  They have crafted and re-crafted their health care bills, until they get CBO (Congressional Budget Office) scores that they can ‘sell’ as reducing the deficit over the next 10 years.

Two of the most blatant examples of this are:

1. Having ten years of tax revenues, but delaying the implementation of the majority of the health care bill for four years, so there are only six years of costs.
2. Continuously pulling the Medicare ‘doctors fix’ from House and Senate bills, because if the fix is delayed, the CBO is not allowed to count the $300+ billion of cost in their bill costing and deficit calculations.

Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone could use the ‘budgeting’ scheme that Obama, Pelosi and Reid are using?  When you are trying to get a loan and the bank asks for your income and expenses, you could say, “well, this is how much my salary is for the year, but for my expenses, I’m not going to count January 1st through April 15th, because that would make it look like I couldn’t afford the house, so I am only going to count my bills after April 15th.”

No bank would accept that approach, but that is exactly the manipulation that exists in the Democrat’s health care bill, so that Obama, Pelosi and Reid can say, “it reduces the deficit over the first decade.”   Of course it does, if you manipulate the numbers, include ten years of tax revenues, but only six years of program costs, you are able to make it look good for that first ten years.

Even using this manipulation, Pelosi and Reid have had to play ping pong with the CBO, because even with four extra years of tax revenues, they have not been able to show any ‘paper’ deficit reductions, without including all kinds of subtle manipulations to the language of the bill, such as mandating fictional cost savings in certain programs.  As I write this, Pelosi has not been able to provide language for the health-care reconciliation bill, because the CBO score keeps coming back too high, which won’t allow them to perpetuate the lie that it will reduce the deficit.  The bill was supposed to be published online days ago.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air comments on Pelosi’s game of continuous CBS scoring:

The entire political world waited yesterday for a report from the Congressional Budget Office that would either allow Democrats to schedule a vote on Saturday for ObamaCare or collapse the effort altogether.  The six PM deadline came and went without a peep out of the CBO, pushing any potential vote into next week.  What happened?  The Washington Times reports today that the CBO has found itself buried under the task of continually re-scoring ObamaCare proposals — and they’re not alone.

The second, and equally egregious, manipulation relates to the doctors fix.  For years, the Medicare reimbursement schedule  has been flawed, and as a result, each year Congress passes a doctors fix, so that doctors will be paid a reasonable reimbursement.  This year, not passing the ‘doctors fix’ would result in doctor’s Medicare reimbursements being cut by 21%, which would result in most doctors immediately stopping the treatment of all Medicare patients.

However, there is a problem, in order to get a CBO score that shows Obamacare reduces the deficit over the next decade, the ‘doctors fix’ cannot be current law.  The CBO can only count the proposed legislation it is scoring and enacted law.  Reid and Pelosi have killed each bill that has been introduced that includes the doctors fix, because they know that their ‘fictional’ deficit reduction of $130 billion or so over the next decade, would immediately become a $200+ billion deficit increase.   Note: several independent reviews of the Senate bill show a REAL first decade actual cost adding $1 trillion to the deficit, vs. the fictional $130 billion deficit reduction.

The reason for this is that by delaying the doctors fix, the CBO is required to count that 21% that will be added back with the doctors fix, as a cut to Medicare.  So, from the CBO score’s perspective, Medicare has been cut by $300+ billion, when in fact it will be added back as soon as the doctors fix is finally passed.

The order of passage of the bills is key to Pelosi, Reid and Obama’s deception.  So, if health care does pass this weekend, then expect to see a doctors fix bill rushed through next week and signed into law.  It’s important to note, that the gang of three are all on record saying that Medicare reimbursements won’t be cut by 21%, but will be fixed separately, they just don’t come clean with the fact that the reason for doing them separately is to manipulate the CBO score.

Mr. President, is this what you meant by “changing the way Washington works”?  Is lying to the American public really the hope and change you promised?

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Cuccinelli warned Pelosi that her parliamentary trick might be unconstitutional, laying the groundwork for a Supreme Court challenge if Pelosi goes through with a vote on a ‘rule’, which would pass the Senate bill using deem-and-pass, rather than a straight up-and-down vote on the Senate bill, as has been promised by Pelosi and President Obama:

Virginia’s attorney general urged U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not to use an arcane parliamentary tactic to pass health care reform without a direct vote, warning in a letter Wednesday that the move might be unconstitutional.

Republican Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli, who last month went to court to oppose the federal plan to regulate greenhouse gases, said in the letter that using the so-called “deem and pass” rule would expose President Barack Obama’s signature domestic initiative to a constitutional challenge.

Cuccinelli joins other Republicans who have opposed the possible maneuver, which both political parties have used in the past. Under the procedure, the Senate-passed health bill would be “deemed” to have passed if House members vote in favor of a rule governing another bill.

“Based upon media interviews and statements which I have seen, you are considering this approach because it might somehow shield members of Congress from taking a recorded vote on an overwhelmingly unpopular Senate bill,” Cuccinelli wrote in the letter to the Democratic speaker. “This is an improper purpose under the bicameralism requirements of Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, one of the purposes of which is to make our representatives fully accountable for their votes.”

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Hot Air has an exclusive first look at a new study that uses the same accounting method that Pelosi’s left-wing group used, but eliminates the fictional cuts to medicare that everyone knows will not happen, and have only been put in the bill to help the CBO score and get the bill passed.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air:

Now, Americans for Tax Reform and the Beacon Hill Institute have conducted their own study using CAP’s methodology and determined that ObamaCare will destroy jobs, not create them.  Hot Air has an exclusive first look at the BHI executive summary:

Here’s an excerpt of the new report that is on Hot Air:

Once we dismiss purported cost savings such as the proposed Medicare cuts, the job gains produced by the CAP methodology become job losses. We  utilized the same econometric model used by the CAP authors to derive employment effects of PPACA, but with the unsupportable costs savings stripped from the model. We provide two estimates:

1. The first estimate applies the CAP methodology to the CMS estimate that the PPACA would increase national health expenditures by $24.8 billion over the baseline case by 2019. This estimate shows that PPACA would kill 120,000 jobs by 2019.
2. The second estimate applies the CAP methodology to a scenario in which we begin with the CMS estimate but in addition eliminate the $437 billion in Medicare cuts assumed by CAP and then factor in an additional $70 billion in discretionary spending that the CBO indicated would take place under the Bill. The addition of these figures would increase national health expenditures by $148.8 billion in 2019 and thus kill 700,000 jobs by 2019.

Visit Hot Air to see the entire report.

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During today’s Situation Room on CNN, Jack Cafferty launched an attack on Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.  Calling them out on the underhanded and cowardly tactics that are being employed to pass Obamacare.  Matthew Balan of News Busters provides some insight and the transcript:

On Tuesday’s Situation Room, CNN’s Jack Cafferty returned to targeting Nancy Pelosi, this time for endorsing the controversial “Slaughter Solution” to passing ObamaCare through the House of Representatives without a vote. Cafferty labeled the proposal “beyond sleazy,” and later flatly remarked, “This reeks!” The commentator even gave some rare kudos to House Republicans.

The full transcript of Jack Cafferty’s segment, which began 14 minutes into the 5 pm Eastern hour of Tuesday’s Situation Room:

CAFFERTY: Just when you think you’ve seen it all in Washington, along comes something like this. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may try to pass the controversial health care reform bill without making members vote on it- simply unbelievable. Pelosi says she might use a procedural tactic where the House will vote on the package of fixes to the Senate bill, and then that vote would signify that lawmakers- quote, ‘deem’ the health care bill to be passed.

Politically speaking, this is beyond sleazy. It’s meant to protect House Democrats, who are all running for reelection in November, from having to make a tough vote up or down on health care reform. Pelosi says of this process- quote, ‘I like it, because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill,’ unquote. In Nancy Pelosi’s world, accountability is a dirty word. The Senate bill, of course, contains many provisions that are unpopular among some House Democrats, including language on abortion funding and taxes on high-cost so-called Cadillac insurance plans.

This tactic has been used in the past, but never- never for something as big and important as the $900 billion health care reform bill- never. Republicans are jumping all over this, rightfully so. They’re painting it as a way for Democrats to avoid taking responsibility, which is exactly what it is. Some even suggest it’s unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, President Obama’s campaigning relentlessly, calling on lawmakers to pass health care reform- quote, ‘I want some courage. I want us to do the right thing,’ unquote. Well, the irony here is if Nancy Pelosi gets her way, it won’t take much courage at all on the part of our so-called representatives, will it?

Here’s the question: should Nancy Pelosi be allowed to push health care reform through the House without a vote? Go to CNN.com/CaffertyFile, post a comment on my blog. Wolf?

WOLF BLITZER (off-camera): We’re earning a lot about reconciliation, about ‘deeming’ bills passed into law. We’re getting a little civics lesson out there, aren’t we, Jack?

CAFFERTY: We’re learning a lot more about lack of political guts.

BLITZER: Yeah, but you and I know that’s been around for a while, right?

CAFFERTY: Not quite in this obnoxious form or noxious form. This reeks!

BLITZER: Jack Cafferty- telling it the way it is. Jack, thank you.

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As dirty as the process appears, the results of Obamacare will be so much worse.  Pajamas Media describes the liberal thinking that has led to the failures of the post office and the city of Detroit, and how the lessons we didn’t learn from their collapses will be re-lived in the health care system if Obamacare is passed:

Before casting “yea” votes in favor of a government health care grab later this week, wavering House Democrats may want to struggle out of the left’s ideological fog for a moment and consider the sad, but instructive, tales of the U.S. Postal Service and the city of Detroit.  Both are poster boys (excuse me, poster persons) for how government can get almost anything gloriously wrong.

That the U.S. Postal Service is swimming in red ink isn’t news. The nation’s postal service, despite its first-class mail monopoly, swims in red ink a lot. The important news to Americans as they follow Washington’s three-ring health care circus is that U.S. Postmaster General Joe E. Potter wants to drop Saturday mail delivery as a cost-cutting measure.

To repeat, the postmaster general wants to reduce service in an effort to staunch red ink. That’s service as in mail delivery, the U.S. Postal Service’s bread and butter. Imagine a hamburger joint announcing to its customers that it plans to stop selling hamburgers a day or two a week to cut costs. Of course, a hamburger joint wouldn’t limit the sale of hamburgers to keep its costs down. The guy who owns the hamburger joint would get creative in his marketing and pricing to sell more hamburgers. He might trim costs operationally but not at the expense of selling as many hamburgers as he and his help could flip. Why the difference? The hamburger joint can go out of business. The U.S. Postal Service, being immune to risk, cannot.

…

Detroit is upside-down liberal thinking gone wild — almost literally. What’s happening in the Motor City gives us a hint to what may lie ahead for government-run health care. Stick with me on this one.

Mayor Dave Bing, a former NBA standout, plans to raze areas of Detroit that are blighted or abandoned. Bing plans to replace ramshackle plots with green spaces and trees. The total area in Detroit that the mayor wishes to raze surpasses all of Youngstown, Ohio, in square miles. Mayor Bing says that razing decrepit and abandon sections of Detroit is a cost-cutting move that will save the city millions of dollars in police and fire services, among others.

What’s the joke many are telling:  Government Health Care — Post office efficiencies, with IRS compassion.

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While Stupak’s primary concern is the Senate bill’s public funding of abortion, that isn’t his only concern.  He says that there are other problems with the Senate bill that he and other House members fear will never be fixed if they agree to pass the Senate bill.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air comments on the interview:

Bart Stupak not only says that the dozen members in his coalition aren’t “really” wavering, the Democratic Congressman also says that abortion isn’t the only problem with the final ObamaCare push. Stupak notes that there are “250″ bills passed by the House languishing in the Senate, and wonders why anyone would assume the Senate would act any more enthusiastically on a reconciliation bill.

It would appear that Pelosi is busy playing Harry Reid’s game of lets make a deal, trying to win votes by cutting special deals, to meet their self imposed deadline of an up or down vote no later than the 21st.

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He told President Clinton that his legislation (Hillarycare) was so complex and far reaching, and would effect so many people, that the American people needed to know what was in it, and that the Senators needed to know what was in it.

If you removed the date he refers to and the name Clinton, everything he says applies to what President Obama is trying to do with Obamacare.

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After defying the vast majority of Arkansas voters who opposed Obamacare, Lincoln voted for cloture and then voted to pass Harry Reid’s health care bill on Christmas Eve.

However, now that the calendar has changed from 2009 to 2010 and it has become an election year, Lincoln is attempting to reverse her position on the health care bill in an attempt to have a fighting chance at re-election in November:

As the Arkansas Senate race heats up, Sen. Blanche Lincoln wants to set the record straight on settling health care with a simple majority vote.

“I have put out a statement several weeks ago that I oppose using reconciliation for passing health care, and I still stand by that.”

In recent days, the Democrat senator has been questioned about exactly where she is on the issue, though she says her position has never changed. Reconciliation would allow Democrats to move forward with just 51 votes, rather than 60.

Lincoln is counting on Arkansas voters being uninformed and believing her new statements of opposition to reconciliation, which she believes will overshadow the fact she already voted for the wildly unpopular health care bill.

Based on the number of “Boot Blanche” billboards lining Arkansas highways, there will be plenty of reminders in November about Lincoln’s actual record in the Senate vs. the campaign-fantasy version she is attempting to create.

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Joe Biden, speaking on the CBS Early Show, stated that the Stimulus Bill was designed in two stages, with the job creation portion of the bill in the second stage, which will kick in this year:

This is actually a pretty amazing assertion by the Vice President.  The White House ‘inherrited’ a country that was hemorrhaging jobs.  The Democrats in the House and Senate, along with President Obama, passed the stimulus practically overnight, without allowing debate on the bill, nor giving members of Congress a chance to read it, because it was critical that the bill was passed in an emergency fashion, because we needed to stop the job losses and start creating new jobs.  We all remember President Obama’s promise that if the Stimulus bill was passed that unemployment wouldn’t top 8%.

Now, Vice President Biden says that the bill was designed so that the job creation portion of the bill wouldn’t occur until the second year, which just coincidentally is an election year.

On its face, it appears that from the start Democrats sacrificed the American economy to create a massive spending bill that they hoped would create great photo ops and news stories 14-18 months after the bill was passed, just in time to help Democrats campaigning for the mid-term elections.

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The latest attack is being launched at the Governor of Virgina:

Democrats have targeted Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell in their effort to paint Republicans as hypocritical when it comes to stimulus money.

The Governor’s office confirmed Monday that Virginia will receive $24 million in federal funds over the next four years to use on health care information technology.

That money comes from funds made available to states by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

McDonnell has emerged as  a rising star in the Republican party since his landslide election victory last November.

McDonnell’s office released a statement on Monday heaping praise on the funding, “I thank U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius for approving Virginia’s application for cooperative funding…”

However, during his campaign McDonnell said the stimulus bill would bring dangerous long term debt.

The DNC wasted no time in jumping on the issue.

“The spate of Republicans being exposed for seeking stimulus dollars under the radar, proves that either Republicans were just being sarcastic when they assailed the stimulus and they actually love the Recovery Act, or their objections are based on politics and not principle,” said  Hari Sevugan, DNC spokeswoman.

As always, it’s hard to tell whether Democrats are really so totally confused on the difference between opposing a stimulus bill they believe is bad for the country and their state or district receiving stimulus money once the Democrats passed the bill.

Senators and House Representatives are sent to Washington to represent the best interest of the people in their districts.  Virtually all Republicans opposed the stimulus bill, because they didn’t believe the orgy of spending and the resulting deficit ballooning was good for the voters of their district, state and country.

However, once the Democrats in Congress passed the $850+ billion stimulus bill then Republicans have an obligation to their constituents to request funds for their home states and districts.  Their constituents, along with their children and grandchildren, will be paying for the trillions of dollars of new debt the Democrats are racking up, so therefore Republicans would not be doing their job if they ‘stood on principle’ and refused to take stimulus dollars.  The people of their districts are going to have to pay for this stimulus bill for a very long time, so therefore they must receive an equal share of it.

The reality is that the Democrats making these accusations of hypocrisy know that there is a big difference between Republican opposition of the bill, and those same Republicans now ‘accepting’ or ‘requesting’ funds for their districts.  However, that fact doesn’t matter.  This week has been decreed a “promote the stimulus” week by President Obama.  He has Cabinet members flying around the country for photo ops and to spin how great the stimulus bill has been.  Therefore, by default, the President’s decree also makes this an ‘honest free’ week.

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A school superintendent in Rhode Island is trying to fix an abysmally bad school system.

Her plan calls for teachers at a local high school to work 25 minutes longer per day, each lunch with students once in a while, and help with tutoring.  The teachers’ union has refused to accept these apparently onerous demands.

The teachers at the high school make $70,000-$78,000, as compared to a median income in the town of $22,000.  This exemplifies a nationwide trend in which public sector workers make far more than their private-sector counterparts (with better benefits).

This happened in a poor town, where reportedly 50% of students were currently failing their courses, and they had a graduation rate of only about 50%.  In order to try and turn the school around, the teachers’ union was asked to give a small number of concessions on time and extra help for the students.  They refused.

As always, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air offers a good perspective:

This is a good argument for getting unions out of the public-employee business altogether.  Not only does the marriage of unions and the public sector create too much of an impulse to expand bureaucracies, it twists the priorities away from public service and towards entitlement thinking.   To their credit, most educators, law enforcement, and emergency response personnel successfully resist that impulse, but this jaw-dropping standoff in Rhode Island shows that it does exist.

The average public sector job is in the $75-80k range, while the average private sector job is in the mid $40k range.  Support for unions and union memberships are near all-time lows.  When given a choice, employees around the country are saying no to unions. Professor Mark J. Perry on his Carpe Diem blog reports that in the ’50s nearly one in three employees were members of unions.  Now, the number is around 12%, or about one in eight workers.

However, there is one exception.   While the number of private sector union workers has been on a steep decline, in 2008 the number of public sector union workers actually exceeded private sector workers for the first time and continues to grow.

While most Americans are rejecting unions, the liberal arm of the Democratic party is fighting to revive one of their largest sources of campaign funds.  This is the reason that Reid, Pelosi and Obama are working hard to get card check passed.  If they succeed in passing card check, then union thugs will be able to intimidate workers into voting for unionization when they otherwise would not and America will suffer the consequences.

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The Senate proposal, which is more narrow than the one analyzed by CBO, is estimated to cost about $10 billion. That would add 80,000 to 180,000 jobs over the course of a year. The U.S. economy, meanwhile, has lost 8.4 million jobs since the start of the recession.

That CBO analysis of a more generous “payroll tax holiday” found that it would only create 8-18 jobs per $1 million in cost.  Making it a very inefficient means of creating jobs.

While Reid had scheduled a vote on this second stimulus bill, he has yet to produce a bill for Republican Senators to read.  While the back-to-back blizzards that hit DC in the last week resulted in the scheduled vote being canceled, it is likely that the vote will be rescheduled before a bill is produced.  To date, Reid refuses to produce the bill or a draft of the bill.  Earlier in the week a draft of the new stimulus bill was leaked, but Democratic leaders responded by stating that the bill that would be voted on would look far different than the leaked bill.

Senator Mitch McConnell has asked with no success for Harry Reid to produce the bill for Republican Senators to review prior to voting on it:

McConnell also requested that Democrats formally release the bill text so his party could read it.

“My members need to be able to feel like they understand what they are being called upon to support,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

Only about a third of the last $850+ billion stimulus bill has been spent, but that $250+ billion has proven to be totally ineffective.  As an example, the stimulus had money earmarked to create the kind of  ‘green jobs’ that President Obama keeps telling us will be the key to the future of the United States.  New information shows that 80% of the money going to develop wind power has gone to Chinese manufacturers:

“Most of the jobs are going overseas,” said Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop. He analyzed which foreign firms had accepted the most stimulus money. “According to our estimates, about 6,000 jobs have been created overseas, and maybe a couple hundred have been created in the U.S.”

Even with the infusion of so much stimulus money, a recent report by American Wind Energy Association showed a drop in U.S. wind manufacturing jobs last year.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the flow of money to foreign companies an outrage, because the stimulus, he said, was intended to create jobs inside the United States.

The good news is we are creating green jobs.  The bad news is that most of those jobs are in China.

Michelle Malkin gives some insight into “porkulus II“:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that the Porkulus II plan – reportedly with an $85 billion price tag — was a “really nice piece of legislation.” But you’ll have to take his credibility-damaged word for it.

Despite anticipated votes on the bill before President’s Weekend, no one outside the Democrat leadership and K Street had seen an actual bill as of Tuesday afternoon. Few will read the whole thing before casting their hasty votes. And once again, we’ll only be informed of the last-minute sweeteners, Cash for Cloture handouts, and backroom deals after the ink of the president’s signature is dry.

Reportedly, public-sector unions are pushing hard to include their precious card-check plan, which would allow Big Labor bosses to sabotage workers’ rights to a federally supervised, private ballot election.

While the fact that only Democrats, lobbyists and union leaders have seen the bill is disturbing, possibly the most disturbing nugget here is about card check.  There have been increasing rumors that the Democrats will try and pass card check by attaching it to the second stimulus bill.  Obama, Reid and Pelosi are receiving increased pressure from unions like the SEIU that are angry that the millions of dollars spent to get Obama and other Democrats elected (likely $100+ million, as SEIU alone spent $60 million on Obama’s campaign) has not been repaid with legislation such as card check and other liberal, union friendly bills. Andy Stern of SEIU has threatened that if the legislation they have paid for isn’t passed, they might not finance the Democrats in the mid-term elections.

A brief explanation of card check.  It is the answer to shrinking union membership in the US.  The law would eliminate the secret ballot, and instead a company would become unionized if more than 50% of the employees signed a card saying they want a union.  Until now, in order to avoid union intimidation of employees, the open signing of these cards by a majority of the employees then led to a secret ballot.  In many cases, employees that were intimidated into signing a card to bring a vote, would then vote against the union during the secret ballot.  To prevent this from happening in the future, Democrats and union leaders want to eliminate the secret ballot and rely ONLY on the public ballot.  Anyone that saw union members shoving voters around during the summer town hall meetings, or saw reporters being harrassed and shoved around while covering the Massachusettes’ special election, understands the danger of relying only on public voting.  When two 300 pound pipe fitters knock on your door and invite themselves in and ask you to sign the card saying you want a union at work, what are you going to do?

Back to stimulus II.  Until we see a bill, we won’t know exactly what it contains, but based on what we know, only 10-15% of it will be tax incentives to hire employees.  Ed Morrissey of Hot Air further explains why the tax breaks won’t work:

In other words, if you’ve taken Econ 101, you know the problem with this bill.  Businesses hire people to meet demand, and they don’t hire people until that demand creates opportunity for profit beyond the price of the employee.   Otherwise, the business loses money and eventually fails, or more likely, reduces its work force to meet the actual demand for its products or services in order to survive.

…

To put it directly, this subsidizes nothing more than the normal business decisions made by growing companies.  It won’t incentivize anyone in their right mind to start a hiring spree.  That’s why the CBO scores it as low as they do.  And at that scoring, the best the proposal will do is increase jobs by 180,000 over the course of the year — which is less than we’ve lost in most of the months in 2009.

So, what will make up the remaining $70-120 billion of spending that this bill is likely to contain?  Until Harry Reid is willing to produce a bill, we can’t say for sure.  However, based on the draft that was leaked, it is simply going to be a laundry list of spending that has nothing to do with job creation.

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Dick Morris says that based on current Rasmussen polling, the Republicans could pick up 10 seats:

If the Republican Party wins every senate seat in which it now holds a lead, according to Rasmussen’s polls, it will capture eight Democratic seats while holding all of its own. The two remaining pickups, to assure control, could be in Indiana where former Senator Dan Coats may run against Senator Evan Bayh and in California.

The two remaining pickups, to assure control, could be in Indiana where former Senator Dan Coats may run against Senator Evan Bayh and in California. Even if Coats does not run, former Congressman John Hostettler is only behind Bayh by 44-41. And, in California, former Hewlitt Packhard CEO Carly Fiorina is also only three points behind Senator Barbara Boxer.

A lot is left to be written in this story.  The Republicans have to hold on to their own seats while picking up 10 Democratic seats.  This is no simple feat.  Public opinion needs to remain negative towards President Obama and the Democratic Congress for such a large swing to occur.

That public opinion will likely be defined by three key issues:

1. If the health care debate remains a long, drawn-out process marked by back room deals, many Independents will continue to lean right.  On the other hand, if it is quickly passed OR dropped, support from Independents could begin to return for the Democrats.
2. Jobs and the economy.  Most Republicans and Independents believe the stimulus has been a failure and waste of money.  If America continues to hemorrhage jobs, and if the second stimulus bill Jobs Bill appears to simply be more reckless spending and pay offs to liberal special interests, we will likely see Independents break the way they did in Massachusetts.
3. Card check and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).  There is talk that the Democrats may try and back door card check by attaching it to the second stimulus bill.  The theory being that if they can sell the bill to the public as having big tax breaks for small businesses and the middle class, and containing other benefits meant to create jobs, then the Republicans will have a hard time keeping all 41 GOP votes in line for a filibuster, even with card check hidden in the bill.  On top of that, Obama has signaled that if the Senate does not confirm Craig Becker to head the NLRB, that he could make him a ‘recess’ appointment, thereby bypassing Senate confirmation.  As polls have shown, America is no longer a union-friendly country.  There could be a large public backlash from Obama bypassing the Senate and putting one of Andy Stern’s VERY radical SEIU guys in charge of such an important position.  Especially considering the fact that SEIU spent $60 million dollars helping Obama get elected, and that Obama and Congressional Democrats paid the unions back when they cut a $60 billion deal to give union members tax breaks that no other US citizen would get.  This of course happened during their televised on C-SPAN closed-door health care meetings at the White House last month.  If Obama and Congressional Democrats ram through Becker’s appointment and slip card check through as an amendment on the second stimulus bill, it will confirm once and for all that the hope and change that Independents bought when electing Obama, really was just a campaign lie.

There are certainly some other issues on the table that could sway voters in either direction over the next nine months, but these three issues will go a long way in determining what message voters will send President Obama and Congressional Democrats in November.

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Brown kicked off his new Senate career with a press conference, where he made a statement that didn’t sit well with the White House:

He has vowed to be an independent voice, and the GOP will not be able to count on him on every vote.

“If I see a bill that’s good for my state,” he might consider siding with the Democrats, Brown said.

“I can’t promise I will be right in every vote I make. … I will do the very best job I can,” Brown told reporters in Washington.

At a news conference, Brown made an assertion about the last federal economic stimulus bill that most economists would dispute.

“The last stimulus bill didn’t create one new job,” Brown said in response to a question about a jobs bill pending in the Senate. He added that the stimulus may have retained some jobs.

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air has some commentary about Brown’s press conference:

Thus endeth the supermajority. Two clips for you, one of the ceremony itself and the other of Scotty B’s presser immediately afterwards, at which budget deficits and terrorism are mentioned as top priorities. (Note the call for a “JFK-style tax cut.”) Of note: At around 4:30 of the C-SPAN clip, he hedges on “don’t ask, don’t tell” by saying he wants to talk to some generals before deciding, and at 5:45 he insists that the stimulus didn’t create a single new job.

If you head over to Hot Air, you can see videos of the swearing in and of Brown’s presser.

While Republican voters all around the country led a grass-roots campaigning and fund raising effort to get Brown elected, few of them really know what type of Republican Scott Brown will be now that he is Senator Brown.

Yesterday, it was announced that Congressional Democrats have once again scheduled a cloture vote for a new stimulus bill Jobs Bill that hadn’t even been submitted to the Senate yet.  While Reid is introducing a partisan bill and trying to do so in a manner that will not allow any committee or floor debate on the new stimulus bill, he needs one Republican to vote for the Democrat’s bill.

While Senator Olympia Snowe is considered a prime candidate to vote with the Democrats, there was also some fear that Scott Brown would choose to vote for the new stimulus bill.  While his comments yesterday make clear he is in line with most Americans who believe the first stimulus bill was ineffective, we should find out in the next 24-48 hours what position he will take on Reid’s new stimulus bill.

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Rather than reign in spending, Democrats in Congress simply voted themselves a credit line increase, meaning the US debt will continue to soar.  It’s important to note that the Senate vote passed 60-40 along party lines, with the 60th Senate vote being Paul Kirk, who by Senate rule might not even have the authority to vote after Scott Brown won the special election earlier this month.  As a side not, it is not the only “party line” vote that Kirk has participated in since Scott Brown’s election.

While President Obama and the Democratic Congress continue their massive spending  spree, Moody’s Investor Service has said that the US is at risk for losing their AAA credit rating:

The credit ratings agency cautioned that if the US were to grow at slower pace levels than expected, the largest economy in the world’s already-extended finances could be over-stretched, in turn damaging its AAA credit rating.

Were the US to lose its AAA rating, it could cause further financial damage, by increasing the cost of borrowing money, a necessary evil for a country predicted to have a $1.56 trillion (£980bn) budget deficit this year.

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In what is becoming business as usual for Reid and Pelosi, Democratic leadership has stated that they will schedule an initial vote for the Second Stimulus Bill Jobs Bill on Monday.  In order to accomplish this, Reid will move to cut off debate on the bill, which has yet to be produced, on Friday or Saturday.

No, the bill has not been online for five days, or even 72 hours, and not even the Democrats that have already committed to voting for it have seen it.

To make matters worse, not only have they once again schedule a vote on a bill that nobody has read and are pushing it through in a manner that prevents any input from Senate Committees or floor debate, but there is talk that they will once again attempt to fund a second stimulus bill with TARP money.

“It’s against the law to pay for it out of TARP. It’s an outrage and an insult. We were assured when the TARP was passed that that money would simply go to stabilize the financial institution in America — and would be spent for no other reason,” McCain told reporters.

By law, unused TARP funds and any returns coming back from the program are to be used to pay down the debt.

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There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America’s critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. When, oh when, will this administration wake up?

…

Administration officials defend what happened in Detroit and assert, against common sense and the holy truth itself, that they got valuable intelligence — and so what more would you want? But Abdulmutallab went silent before terrorism experts from Washington could get to him. It has been more than a month since he last opened his mouth, and even if he resumes cooperating — a deal may be in the works — he now knows just a bit more about the present-day location of various al-Qaeda operatives than does Regis Philbin.

The announced closing of Guantanamo has also suffered from a peculiar Obama-style naivete. It is now apparent that there are some bad people there who should be detained way past the time they are eligible for AARP membership. It’s true that the world does not like Guantanamo, but then it’s also true that the world is not an al-Qaeda target.

KSM, Abdulmutallab and other accused terrorists should be tried. But these two are not Americans, and they are accused of terrorism, tantamount to an act of war — a virtual Pearl Harbor, in KSM’s case. A military tribunal would fit them fine. If it is good enough for your average GI accused of murder or some such thing, it ought to be good enough for a foreign national with mass murder on his mind.

Poll after poll shows that the American people know what the Washington Post is finally figuring out, and what the Obama administration is still blind to.  Their policy of “if we extend our hand, they will like us and not attack us” is naive and VERY dangerous.  President Obama is playing a very dangerous game with our national security, and he doesn’t even seem to understand the rules of the game.

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In an extreme misuse of the reconciliation process, the Democrats are planning to convince House Democrats to pass the Senate bill as is, while being promised that Senate Democrats will ‘fix it’ by passing a reconciliation bill.  By ‘fix it’, they mean adding back in the Union pay off (repaying unions $60 billion for the $60+ million that SEIU and other unions spent on Obama’s campaign) and the other special deals that were negotiated behind closed doors at the White House by House and Senate Democrats, President Obama and Union leaders.

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air explains how the GOP will counter the Democrats attempt to circumvent and bastardize the normal legislative process:

I kind of hope they do it now, because this would simply be traffic gold.

The GOP Senate leadership has privately settled on a strategy to derail health reform if Dems try to pass the Senate bill with a fix through reconciliation, aides say: Unleash an endless stream of amendments designed to stall for time and to force Dems to take untenable votes…

Senator Judd Gregg is getting some attention today because he vowed to make it an “extraordinarily difficult exercise” for Dems to pass the Senate bill through the House while getting the Senate to fix the bill with a “sidecar” through reconciliation…

[T]here’s no limit on the number of amendments GOPers can offer, [a Republican] aide said, or on their subject matter. A senior Democratic aide confirmed that this is the case — and that it’s a concern weighing on Dems.

“If you bring a reconciliation bill to the Senate, it’s a free for all of amendments,” the GOP aide said, cautioning that this was only part of the overall strategy. “There is no way to limit the number of amendments that are voted on. You can’t close debate. Democrats will have to vote on every politically perilous amendment that you can possibly think of.”

Bayh and Lincoln came out today against reconciliation, but that was expected and their votes aren’t needed anyway. More interesting is Dodd, who called for an ObamaCare “cooling off” period after Brown won the Massachusetts election and is now pushing Reid to invite the GOP to the table to forge a compromise bill. Presumably he thinks McConnell et al. will walk away and the Dems can then claim they have no choice but to go with reconciliation, which should soften public disapproval of the tactic.

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Now, more information has come out regarding other costs, such as a $2200 a night room cost at the Copenhagen Marriott, which brings the total cost to tax payers to over a million dollars.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has a breakdown of the absurd costs:

How much did the US spend on the trip to the Copenhagen conference on global warming? Enough to melt a Himalayan glacier — and that’s just for the Congressional delegation. The total cost of the 106 people traveling under the aegis of Congress came to over $400,000 for two days in Denmark, thanks to a $2200 per-person, per-day rate at the Marriott. CBS News reports that no one wants to talk about the massive bill in light of American economic troubles.

…

When the travel expenses get added, the bill comes up to over $1.1 million. Commercial flights cost $5000 each, and the three military jets cost even more, around $168,000 for the flight time. This begs the question as to why Congress sent a delegation at all, and certainly one that large. After all, Congress does not negotiate treaties. The Constitution specifically assigns that task to the executive branch.

So, if Congress doesn’t negotiate treaties, combined with the fact that the US is in the middle of a major economic crisis, why did 100+ Congressmen, wives, husbands and staffers blow a million dollars so they could go party with their global warming alarmist buddies in Copenhagen?

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Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has more:

It appears that the lesson of Scott Brown’s surprise victory did not go completely unnoticed by Senate Democrats from red states.  Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) announced today that she will not go along with the rumored plan to use reconciliation to push ObamaCare through Congress, making the plan much more complicated for Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to succeed:

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) will oppose Dem efforts to move health care legislation through Congress using budget reconciliation, hurting Dems’ chances for using the controversial parliamentary maneuver to pass a reform bill.

“I am opposed to and will fight against any attempts to push through changes to the Senate health insurance reform legislation by using budget reconciliation tactics that would allow the Senate to pass a package of changes to our original bill with 51 votes,” Lincoln said in a statement on Tuesday. “I have successfully fought for transparency throughout Senate deliberations on health care, and I will continue to do so.”

“I will not accept any last-minute efforts to force changes to health insurance reform issues through budget reconciliation, and neither will Arkansans. We have worked too long and too hard on this reform effort – we need to get it right,” she said.

Plain and simple, this is a political trick.  Now that the Democrats no longer have 60 votes, and if they go the reconciliation route, they only need 50 votes (with Biden being the 51st), Reid is letting the faux-moderates vote against the bill in reconciliation so they can claim in November that they voted against the bill.

In a little over nine months we will find out if American voters are as dumb and ill informed as Lincoln and other Democrats believe.

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Marion Berry, Vic Snyder and Mike Ross

It appears the ripple effect from President Obama’s plummeting approval rating, national disapproval of the Democrats’ handling of health care and the economy and Scott Browns stunning win in Massachusetts continues.

Vic Snyder (D-AR) had already announced his retirement, and Blanche Lincoln appears to be the longest of long shots to keep her Senate seat (assuming she doesn’t retire), and now Marion Berry is expected to announce his retirement today:

Arkansas Rep. Marion Berry is expected to announce his retirement tomorrow morning, according to three sources briefed on the decision.

Berry will become the sixth Democrat in a competitive seat to leave in the last two months but the first to announce his retirement since the party’s special election loss in Massachusetts last Tuesday.

“The message coming out of the Massachusetts special election is clear: No Democrat is safe,” said National Republican Congressional Committee communications director Ken Spain.

Berry, first elected in 1996, had been noncommittal about his re-election bid for months although, privately, his allies insisted he was planning to run for re-election.

While Berry had rarely been challenged in the 1st district over the past decade or so, the seat has a clear Republican tilt as Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) won it with 59 percent in 2008.

Arkansas will be a huge focus of Republican efforts in the fall with Berry and Rep. Vic Snyder (D) retiring and Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) in deep trouble as she seek re-election.

Arkansas is one of those southern states that tends to elect Democrats to local, state and federal offices, BUT expects them to vote in a manner consistent with the state’s conservative views.  Lincoln, Prior, Berry, Ross and others have failed to honor their constituents trust and now see the writing on the wall.

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On Thursday, there were rumors that Pelosi was presenting to the Democratic caucus a plan similar to what Dick Morris describes below.  The reports on Thursday said it was derailed for two reasons.  First, the feedback Pelosi received, especially from the liberals, about not being willing to pass the Senate version of Obamacare.  Second, because it was reported that Reid could not get 51 Senate signatures promising to ‘fix’ the Senate version of Obamacare via reconciliation.

According to Morris, the gang of three have not dropped their plan to bastardize the legislative process:

President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate leader Harry Reid have all 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 that 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 like 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 has also agreed to bypass Senate cloture and filibuster rules and claim that these modifications fall under “reconciliation” and don’t require 60 Senate votes.

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President Obama has seen his approval rating plummet at an unprecedented rate.  He watched a grass roots movement grow behind Scott Brown and his promise to be the “41st vote against the health care bill in Congress”.  This groundswell of support, both in Massachusetts and across the nation, for Brown’s promise led Scott Brown to a decisive victory in the bluest of blue states.  A month ago, Coakley led by 30 points, today she lost Teddy’s seat to a Republican by 5 points.   If that isn’t a message to Obama, Pelosi and Reid, then I don’t know what is.

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air chimes in on the skittish Democrats in Congress:

Remember, Lieberman and Bayh all but warned Obama earlier today to back off. About an hour ago, just as news of Brown’s victory broke, Jim Webb chimed in: “[I]t would only be fair and prudent that we suspend further votes on health care legislation until Senator-elect Brown is seated.” That wouldn’t solve the ping pong problem, but the more Senate centrists there are speaking out against the bill, the softer the House Blue Dog coalition will get. Every last member of the 60-vote coalition needs to be asked if they’d be willing to vote for Reid’s bill again in light of what happened in Massachusetts. I’d be awfully curious to see how close you get to 60 again. Or 50, for that matter.

The rumblings over the last few days were that many Democrats in Congress were getting the message, even if the gang of three weren’t.  They realize that if President Obama and Harry Reid push forward with the nuclear option, the use of reconciliation to pass portions of the bill, then no Democrat up for reelection in November will be safe from the nuclear fallout that will follow their blatant disregard for the will of America.

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Unlike the Boston Globe that at times appeared to be a part of the Coakley campaign, the Boston Herald honestly reported on the poll results as Brown surged in the week leading up to the election.  Now, this scene of Scott Brown holding up the Herald’s special election edition will send shivers up the spines of Democrats up for reelection in November.

Scott Brown roars to Senate upset win:

State Sen. Scott Brown blasted Bay State expectations today with a bombshell victory over his Democratic rival to capture the open U.S. Senate seat by a 5-point margin.

“I bet they can hear this cheering all the way to Washington, D.C.,” Brown said tonight.

“Tonight the independent voice of Massachusetts has spoken,” he added.

Brown, 50, of Wrentham, will roll into Washington as Congress wrestles with health-care reform. Brown has vowed to be “the 41st Senator” who will defeat the measure and bust up the Democratic supermajority.

Democrat Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, has gone down in a stunning defeat. Brown has won 52-47 percent, with 94 percent of the precincts reporting. Independent Joseph L. Kennedy finished way back with 1 percent of the vote.

To quote Michelle Malkin, “there are more long faces tonight on MSNBC than at an aardvark convention.”  Scott Brown has sent shock-waves through the liberal elite, whether it be in the media or in Congress.  The bluest of blue states just elected an underfunded, Republican candidate over the appointed (or is that anointed) replacement to fill Teddy’s seat, Martha Coakley.

As Brown said tonight, “We are united by basic convictions that only need to be clearly stated to win a majority, and if anyone doubts that in this election cycle that is about to begin, then let them look at what happened in Massachusetts.  What happened here can happen all over America.”

A good looking, well spoken, charismatic and funny Republican that is viewed as a moderate.  If he just chucked that pro-choice stance (like a certain Governor did) he might be looking for more than a Senate seat come 2012 or 2016.

Ok, it’s way premature to talk about a Presidential run, especially considering that he appears to be a fairly liberal Republican.  However, what the Republican Party needs to take from this is that if they run candidates like Sarah Palin and Scott Brown that come across as real people, rather than elite politicians, they can harness the excitement that Palin created last year and that Scott Brown just created across the country while running for a special election in Massachusetts.

In football, they often talk about a ‘blueprint’ to beat a team.  Scott Brown has given the Republican Party a blueprint to win big in November.  Time will tell if the Republican Party will learn anything from this amazing upset or if they will just go back to party business as usual.

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This puts a new spin on Barack Obama’s appearance for Martha Coakley today. Ed Henry reports for CNN that White House advisers have quietly started to predict a loss for Martha Coakley despite putting on a happy game face for public consumption. If this is true, one has to wonder why Obama bothered to show up at all today. Could it have been a decision that a failure to do anything would have been seen as an admission of weakness — and an attempt to avoid the perception that Obama won’t help protect Congressional Democrats in trouble down the road?

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In an article on Big Government, Dick Morris calls the Massachusetts special election a game changer:

Beyond a pleasing sight for the heart, what would Ted Kennedy’s seat going Republican really mean?

A lot.

First, there would be the psychological effect.

On Democratic donors — it would discourage them from opening their checkbooks. On Republican donors — the impact would be electric in kindling their interest and generosity. On Democratic incumbents seeking re-election — it would make the beaches and golf courses that await them in their Florida retirement homes (and the lucrative lobbying jobs in Washington) infinitely more attractive. On Republicans considering running for the House and the Senate — it will help them see the truth: That their time is at hand! (It might even help our esteemed Party Chairman Michael Steele, realize that we can capture both houses this year!)

But in the Senate itself, it would really signal the end of Obama’s legislative dominance. He’ll probably be able to pass health care either by Democratic dithering in certifying Brown’s election or by ramming through the bill while he’s en route to Washington on the shuttle.

But, beyond that, the prospects of getting 60 votes on the remaining items in Obama’s legislative agenda: cap and trade, union card check, and immigration reform would slip away with the Massachusetts result.

He cannot govern through reconciliation (passing bills with 51 votes by pretending they are just budget bills). If it were that easy, why would Harry Reid have worked so hard – and so successfully – to bribe Senators Landrieu (D-La), Lincoln (D-Ark) and Nelson (D-Neb)? Why would he have caved in to the demands of Connecticut’s Joseph Lieberman and discarded the public option much to the chagrin of his House colleagues?

Check out the rest of Morris’ article on Big Government.  He explains that the impact goes beyond the Dems simply losing their filibuster proof majority.  As they approach the November elections, can they now consider any Congressional Democratic seat safe?

If Teddy’s seat in the bluest of blue states isn’t safe, which one is?

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Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson and his wife were leaving dinner at a new pizza joint near their home in Omaha one night last week when a patron began complaining about Nelson’s decisive vote in favor of the Senate’s health care bill.

Other customers started booing. A woman yelled, “Get him the hell out of here!” And the Nelsons and their dining companions beat a hasty retreat.

“It was definitely a scene in there,” said Tom Lewis, a 41-year-old dentist and registered Republican who witnessed the incident. A second witness confirmed the incident to POLITICO.

It’s a new experience for Nelson.

He used to be a popular figure back home, a Democrat who served eight years in the governor’s office and was elected twice to the Senate by a state that’s as red as the “N” on the University of Nebraska’s football helmets.

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air talks about how far Nelson has fallen and what a Brown victory in Massachusetts could mean:

This is no freshman Democrat. He’s on his second term as senator after having served two as governor — a popular pol, until this year. Now he trails by, um, 31 points in hypothetical match-ups with Nebraska’s current governor. Good work, Ben. Exit question: Assume Brown wins and that, as predicted, Democrats on the Hill and in Massachusetts move to delay seating him until they can pass ObamaCare. Does Nelson use that as an opportunity to switch his vote and derail the whole project?

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Thanks to Ace of Spades for this gem.  The Red Mass Group has a transcript of Coakley’s comments:

Ken Pittman: Right, if you are a Catholic, and believe what the Pope teaches that any form of birth control is a sin. ah you don’t want to do that.

Martha Coakley: No we have a seperation of church and state Ken, lets be clear.

Ken Pittman: In the emergency room you still have your religious freedom.

Martha Coakley: (…stammering) The law says that people are allowed to have that. You can have religious freedom but you probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room.

Michelle Malkin points out that Coakley’s tongue  is her worst enemy.  Not only with the Fenway Park and emergency room comments, but also when she talked about the rape of a toddler:

Also of interest: Coakley’s comments in the same interview about her role in the notorious rape case of a 23-month-old toddler. The comments begin at about the 6:30 mark. She suggests that the mother of the child may have been “potentially guilty in that case” — which begs the question (unasked by the host) of why Coakley didn’t pursue criminal charges against her:

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A new Suffolk University/ News 7 poll has Scott Brown leading Martha Coakley 50-46, which includes him leading among independents 65-30.  They go on to say that models show large numbers of independents showing up on election day, which would be a huge advantage to Brown.

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air has this breakdown of the numbers:

The difference in favorables is enormous. Coakley? 49/41. Brown? 57/19. Even worse for Coakley, 64 percent of voters think she’ll win — precisely the sort of complacency that has Dems terrified about turnout.

Update: Just noticed upon re-reading that Suffolk has the same number of Dems crossing for Brown as PPP did last weekend — 17 percent, a shocking amount.

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This is big news as most of the donations have come from small, online contributions, which historically has been how Democratic candidates raise big bucks, not Republican candidates.

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air has some thoughts on Brown’s fundraising:

Here’s the donation page in case you haven’t gotten some of this action yet. Whatever happens next week, MKH (as usual) and Kos (for once) are right: Brown’s online haul from grassroots conservatives is groundbreaking stuff for the GOP, and don’t think the base’s populist heroes — starting with our friend Mr. Rubio — aren’t keenly aware of it.

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Big Government has this story about Democrats continuing to cover up ACORN’s misdeeds:

The CRS report commissioned by House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) –both longtime ACORN allies– is a whitewash.

The first finding Conyers and Frank crow about in a press release is this:

There were no instances of individuals who were allegedly registered to vote improperly by ACORN or its employees and who were reported “attempting to vote at the polls.”

This is demonstrably false.  Darnell Nash of Cleveland, Ohio, was registered to vote nine times by ACORN. After fraudulently casting a ballot, he was convicted of both vote fraud and voter registration fraud and sentenced to six months imprisonment. ACORN remains under investigation by the elected Democratic prosecutor Bill Mason in Cuyahoga County (at least according to Mason’s spokesman the last time I spoke to him).

And to think — our tax dollars paid for this worthless report.

This appears to be typical liberal “if we say it’s true, they will believe it’s a fact.”  How many videos have surfaced of ACORN employees telling people to register multiple times, of them telling the people they drove to the polls to vote for Obama?  Multiple people have been caught or admitted to both being registered multiple times by ACORN employees and voting multiple times.  Yet, Representatives Frank and Conyers want us to believe that ACORN employees did nothing improper.

Then again, is it any wonder that Barney Frank believes that he can get away with covering up ACORN’s election activities, considering how successfull he was in spinning his major role in the financial meltdown through his pushing for reduced restrictions on mortgage lenders in general and Fannie and Freddie in particular.

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However, in recent days things have begun to get nasty.  While Scott Brown himself has remained mostly positive and focused on the issues, Coakley and her supporters have gone negative in a big way, from claiming he has made a deal with the devil to being a Bush/Cheney clone.

Newsmax details some of the Democratic attacks:

In a 48-hour span:

• Democrat Martha Coakley, who had been heavily favored, unleashed a TV ad attacking her GOP opponent, Scott Brown, as “in lockstep with Washington Republicans.”
• The national committee charged with electing Senate Democrats rolled out an ad claiming Massachusetts voters know little about Brown and imploring them not to let him “take them for a ride.”
• The Service Employees International Union went on the air with a spot that says Brown “calls himself independent, but voted with Republican leadership 96 percent of the time,” opposes abortion rights and is backed by some of Sarah Palin’s supporters.

The late-game strategy: use Republicans as a foil in a Democratic state to undercut Brown, who has cast himself as an independent and downplayed his conservative credentials.

The onslaught of negative TV ads and arrival of out-of-state operatives underscore Democrats’ worry that their hold on the seat in a solidly Democratic state is in jeopardy — and that they could lose the pivotal 60th Senate vote needed to pass President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul and other legislation.

The Democrats aren’t the only ones that have turned to negative ads.  While Brown has remained above the fray, Republican groups attempting to support Brown have criticized Coakley as a candidate that will support massive spending and big tax increases.

With less than a week to go before Tuesday’s election, the polls show a dead heat in the Senate race.  This has Democrats scrambling to defend what they thought was a sure win, and Republicans trying to steal the upset that they thought was out of reach.

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Hot Air discusses Reid’s predicament:

What are the odds that a guy given to rambling about “negro dialects” in front of reporters will make any more mistakes before November? Incidentally, Rasmussen also shows him sinking further below the waves today thanks to the revelations in “Game Change,” which leaves the Dems with a nasty dilemma: How much worse do things have to get before the party establishment starts leaning on him to retire? That’s an easy call in the case of someone like Dodd but the moral dimension is tougher with Reid.

PPP shows Reid’s popularity among black voters wavering after his “negro dialect” comments:

Reid gets only 52% of the black vote against Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian in the poll, a weak standing for a Democrat to be sure, and worse than the 61% Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman gets in the survey. With Republicans and independents in the state pretty universally lined up against him Reid’s margin for error with his base voters is very low and that 52% figure is not going to get the job done. Whether that standing is a short term reaction to the ‘negro’ revelation that will subside or a long term problem that will plague Reid remains to be seen.

This much seems clear: Reid’s standing for reelection was perilous a week ago and now it looks even worse. Even an error free 2010 might not be enough for him to keep his seat, and any further mistakes will reduce his chances of winning to about nil. Look for the numbers tomorrow on whether Dems would be better off with someone else.

Recent polls show that Reid is trailing all three potential Republican candidates by healthy margins (two by 12% or more).  Whether through his own doing or arm twisting by President Obama, Reid has become the poster child for all that is wrong in Washington.  From the closed door meetings locking out Republican leaders, to the deals he cut with Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Bernie Sanders and others to buy their votes, he has led the Senate in a way that most Americans find offensive.

While Vegas likely doesn’t have the odds of Reid retaining his seat quite as bad as the Detroit Lions winning the 2011 Super Bowl, they probably aren’t far off.

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This from Hot Air:

I never believed that House Dems would have the stones to walk away, but suddenly there are a lot of flares going up. Rangel’s warning that the bill won’t be done this month; Emanuel Cleaver’s telling nutroots bloggers that this is no fait accompli; and Politico’s reporting mounting anger over the “Cadillac plan” tax. Quoth Anthony Weiner, “We keep hearing them squeal like pigs in the Senate that they had a tough time getting to 60. Well, it wasn’t particularly a picnic for us to get to 218…The Senate Kabuki dance has lost its magic on those of us in the House.”

While once again no Republicans were present, and President Obama still refused to honor his promise to televise negotiations on C-SPAN, his morning meeting to finalize details on Obamacare turned into an all day battle:

What was expected to be a morning meeting with the president on health care turned into all-day, intense negotiations with Democratic leaders trying to find compromise on differences over House and Senate health care bills.

The meetings did not finally wrap up until after 6:30 p.m. ET.

Senior congressional Democratic sources told CNN that the White House is pushing them hard to move quickly to resolve differences on a broad range of issues. The president and his top aides are being more aggressive than ever before in trying to broker a deal.

Though Democratic leaders and White House officials are tight-lipped about specifics, there is a deep House-Senate Democratic divide over how to pay for health care reform.

While the consensus opinion is that in the end the Democrats in the House and Senate will pass a health care bill, it appears negotiations between the House, Senate, White House and the unions (yes, hard to believe the unions are in the negotiations) are not going smoothly.   Many believed that if the Senate was able to steal and buy enough votes to pass Obamacare before Christmas that Pelosi would simply rubber stamp the bill and have House Democrats pass the Senate version.  If it’s true that Pelosi agreed t0 do that, she clearly underestimated her ability to dictate to House Democrats how and what they should vote on.

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RNC Chairman Michael Steele has said that the GOP will not gain control of Congress in 2010, which is understandable, conservative statement, since the Democrats have such a large majority in both houses.

Others feel that the American public is so angry that there will be a political revolution of sorts that will result in a massive victory by the Republican candidates on the tickets.  The basis for this belief is that the non-liberal American public is very angry at what appears to be a complete disregard by the Democratic majority for what most Americans want.  To make matters worse, while both Pelosi and candidate Barack Obama promised that under their watch we would see the most transparent Washington ever, the reality has been quite the opposite with meeting after meeting conducted behind closed doors, shutting out both Republicans and the American public.  While President Obama promised that health care negotiations would be televised on C-SPAN and that he would reach across the aisle, the reality is that within days of being sworn in he stated “I won” as justification for not involving Republican leaders in key legislation, and he has refused to televise health care negotiations on C-SPAN as he promised at least eight times on the campaign.

To make matters worse, while he refuses to honor his word of putting the health care negotiations on C-SPAN, he and his staff are meeting with union leaders to reach a compromise on Obamacare.  While he is hiding the negotiations from the American people, and refuses input from Republican leaders, he is having closed door meetings with union leaders to agree on a health care bill compromise.

Wasn’t President Obama’s promise of televising negotiations on C-SPAN specifically meant to prevent the kind of back-door deals that he, Pelosi and Reid are trying to cut with union leaders this week at the White House?

This is why the question is not whether there will be a backlash against Democrats in November, but instead how big a backlash it will be.

Dick Morris describes exactly how big the backlash could be and how it could lead to Republican control of both houses:

Pessimism is no more attractive in a party leader than it is in a high school cheerleader. And in the case of Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele, it is unwarranted as well. Despite his prediction, on Fox News, that GOP congressional control will not come “this year,” the Republican Party has a very, very good chance of taking both houses of Congress in 2010.

We are in the midst of a political tsunami. To judge that the water will only ascend a hundred feet or two hundred or three hundred is entirely speculative. Generally, once these things start, they go further than anyone would have thought likely. Only rarely do they fall short.

President Barack Obama’s determination to march ahead with his full socialist agenda, including the imposition of a healthcare system a majority doesn’t want, can only strengthen the winds and the tide that is approaching. The 60-vote Democratic Senate majority is empowering such arrogance and disdain for the democratic process that it is easy to see how it will trigger an equal and opposite reaction in the 2010 elections.

Be sure to visit DickMorris.com to read his full article that lays out the roadmap for how the Republicans can win enough seats to take control of both houses of Congress.

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The same day that Coakley was raising money with Pharma and insurance lobbyists, Democrats published a press release accusing Brown of  making a “deal with the devil“, because of his association with the Tea Party movement.

Big Government runs down the list of health care companies hosting Coakley’s fundraiser:

Of the 22 names on the host committee–meaning they raised $10,000 or more for Coakley–17 are federally registered lobbyists, 15 of whom have health-care clients. Of the other five hosts, one is married to a lobbyist, one was a lobbyist in Pennsylvania, another is a lawyer at a lobbying firm, and another is a corporate CEO. Oh, and of course, there’s also the political action commitee for Boston Scientific Corporation.

All the leading drug companies have lobbyists on Coakley’s host committee: Pfizer, Merck, Amgen, Sanofi-Aventis, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Astra-Zeneca, and more. On the insurance side of things, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Cigna, Humana, HealthSouth, and United Health all are represented on the host committee.

Those HMOs (like Aetna) or drug companies who don’t have lobbyists in Coakley’s top tier of fundraisers? They’re covered, because the host committee includes four lobbyists representing the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), two representing America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), and one representing the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO)

Not only is Coakley turning to Pharma and health insurance lobbyists to fund the last week of her campaign, but SEIU is dumping money and man power into Massachusetts to support her.

Michelle Malkin reports on SEIU buying attack ads against Brown:

Now, on top of all the manpower that the Big Labor army of Purple Shirts has lent her, plus the group’s primary endorsement, and the $214,000 they sent her for radio ad buys last fall, the SEIU is preparing to burn through another $685,000 in rank-and-file union members’ dues for the attorney general.

Via the Boston Globe tonight:

A major national union supporting Democrat Martha Coakley is taking out a massive TV ad buy that slams her Republican rival, Scott Brown, for his positions on abortion and climate change.

The ad taken out by the Service Employees International Union, will begin airing statewide tomorrow. The buy size is $685,000, one of the largest of the election.

It’s unlikely that Coakley or the Democrats in Washington will see the irony in attacking Scott Brown for being associated with a grass roots effort like the Tea Party movement, and fighting to stop what the Democrats are trying to sell as health care ‘reform’, while Coakley is turning to Pharma and insurance lobbyists to help her raise funds to win the senate seat and pass the health care bill that will supposedly restrict the profits of the greedy pharmaceutical and insurance companies, which are raising funds for her.

In a week we will know if Brown just gave the Democrats a scare or becomes the shot heard ’round Washington.  Either way, Brown’s success in a solidly blue state like Massachusetts likely has a dozen or so Democratic Senators wondering what their fate will be come November.

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CBS has this report:

CBS investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports that cameras spotted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the summit. She called the shots on who got to go. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and embattled Chairman of the Tax Committee Charles Rangel were also there.

They were joined by 17 colleagues: Democrats: Waxman, Miller, Markey, Gordon, Levin, Blumenauer, DeGette, Inslee, Ryan, Butterfield, Cleaver, Giffords, and Republicans: Barton, Upton, Moore Capito, Sullivan, Blackburn and Sensenbrenner.

That’s not the half of it. But finding out more was a bit like trying to get the keys to Ft. Knox. Many referred us to Speaker Pelosi who wouldn’t agree to an interview. Her office said it “will comply with disclosure requirements” but wouldn’t give us cost estimates or even tell us where they all stayed.

Senator Inhofe (R-OK) is one of the few who provided us any detail. He attended the summit on his own for just a few hours, to give an “opposing view.”

“They’re going because it’s the biggest party of the year,” Sen. Inhofe said. “The worst thing that happened there is they ran out of caviar.”

Our investigation found that the congressional delegation was so large, it needed three military jets: two 737′s and a Gulfstream Five — up to 64 passengers — traveling in luxurious comfort.

Add senators and staff, most of whom flew commercial, and we counted at least 101 Congress-related attendees. All for a summit that failed to deliver a global climate deal.

With as many as 15% of Americans out of work (when you include those that have fallen off the unemployment roles) and a health care bill that most Congressmen had not read, these 20 Congressmen chose to spend hundreds of thousands of tax payer dollars to have a party in Copenhagen with their climate change buddies.

Hot Air has this on the story:

A nice surprise from Katie Couric on a day when Rasmussen reports 50 percent of likely voters no longer believe in man-made global warming. I thought they were going to leave out the carbon emission angle — but just wait.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

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Hot Air had this commentary:

While we wait for the official numbers, here’s a short but tasty snippet from tonight’s debate with Coakley followed by what Ben Smith describes as a “kitchen sink” attack ad from her camp. The photo of Bush and Cheney is, needless to say, the centerpiece — apparently Coakley brought up Bush at the debate too — but the suggestion that Brown is somehow pro-rape is a nice touch, I thought. Exit question: They’re getting nervous, aren’t they?

Here are the videos that they refer to.  They are both short and worth watching.

In addition to raising $1 million, Brown also received two big endorsements as detailed at the Patriot Room:

The roll continues. FTA: The State Police Association of Massachusetts today endorsed Scott Brown’s bid for U.S. Senate, citing his determination to keep America safe by treating terrorists as enemy combatants and not as ordinary criminals.

Brown also received the support of the Commissioned Officers Association of the Massachusetts State Police, a body that represents state troopers at the rank of lieutenant and above.

“The terrorist threat in this country is real and Scott Brown will always come down on the side of protecting our nation,” said Richard Brown, president of the State Police Association of Massachusetts. “I’ve known him for years, he’s my state senator, and he’s someone we’ve always been able to trust on the issues that deal with keeping residents safe – especially during times of uncertainty in our country.”

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While his 2008 comments have created a nation wide commotion, it’s his east-coast liberal positions that are angering voters in Nevada.

Ron Futrell of Big Government explains some of the problems that Reid faces:

Reid is set up for a tough….make that, very tough, re-election campaign here in the Silver State. Danny Tarkanian, Sue Lowden, Sharon Angle, and if he wanted to run, the guy who parks your car at the Mirage, all lead Reid in the polls.

Nevadan’s don’t like Reid for a number of reasons, the biggest of which, Reid is not a Nevada Democrat. Oh, it says, D-NV after his name, but Nevada Democrats are pretty conservative.  Those who win public office in Nevada are socially, personally and fiscally conservative, regardless of party affiliation. Reid is seen here as an east coast liberal Democrat. He chose to make that move to gain the power he has as Senate Majority Leader. Reid is a big boy, he knows how this move to the far left would play back home, and he made the decision to go there anyway. In his 2004 Senate campaign Reid posted billboards all over town with him standing, arms folded with the word INDEPENDENT underneath. Those billboards today would be laughed out of town faster than a rebirth of Nudes on Ice (yes that was a real show here in the late 80’s).

Recent polls are showing the voter displeasure with Reid.  His approval rating is in the low 30′s and polls have shown him trailing the Republicans he is likely to face in the Senate election.

Add to this that the very unpopular health care bill is now seen as his baby, and it seems it will take a near miracle for Reid to retain his Senate seat.

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Second, they know that the American people are clamoring to see how the final bill well be constructed.

In response to that request, Peolosi provided standard misstatements and spin (provided by WizBangBlog):

C-SPAN wrote a letter to congressional leaders today asking that TV cameras be allowed in negotiations to reconcile the House and Senate bills.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) defended Congress’s work on a healthcare bill today as having historic transparency as C-SPAN mounted an effort to open negotiations to TV cameras.

“There has never been a more open process for any piece of legislation,” Pelosi said at a press conference.

Pelosi said Congress had been transparent throughout the process, yet the American people have been in the blind, and Republicans in the Senate and House have been literally locked out of rooms where debate on the content of the bills were being constructed.

Now, they say that they are foregoing a standard bi-partisan conference committe to merge the House and Senate health care bills, but instead will only allow top Democrats to be part of this process.  Yet another end run around the established standards of creating US legislation.

At what point does the bastardization of our legislative system stop?

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These statements keep being made despite the fact that meetings on the Senate bill were behind closed doors and only the Democratic caucus was allowed in the room — despite the fact that when President Obama met with Senators on Capital Hill and in the White House, it was only Democratic Senators.

Now, they are taking the bastardization of our legislative system to a new level.

According to Newsmax:

House and Senate Democrats intend to bypass traditional procedures when they negotiate a final compromise on health care legislation, officials said Monday, a move that will exclude Republican lawmakers and reduce their ability to delay or force politically troubling votes in both houses.

The unofficial timetable calls for final passage of the measure to remake the nation’s health care system by the time President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address, probably in early February.

Democratic aides said the final compromise talks would essentially be a three-way negotiation involving top Democrats in the House and Senate and the White House, a structure that gives unusual latitude to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

These officials said there are no plans to appoint a formal House-Senate conference committee, the method Congress most often uses to reconcile differing bills. Under that customary format, a committee chairman is appointed to preside, and other senior lawmakers from both parties and houses participate in typically perfunctory public meetings while the meaningful negotiations occur behind closed doors.

In this case, the plan is to skip the formal meetings, reach an agreement, then have the two houses vote as quickly as possible. A 60-vote Senate majority would be required in advance of final passage.

While nobody actually believes the Democratic talking points about the Republicans being welcomed participants in the formation of health care legislation, this latest move by the gang of three again confirms that President Obama, Pelosi and Reid have no plans to work with Republicans, nor pass legislation in line with what the American public wants.

As President Obama has said, “I won”, which he believes gives him the right to do anything he wants.

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In the weeks leading up to Lincoln voting for Harry Reid’s health care bill, the polls and feedback her offices received clearly told her that the people of Arkansas did not want here voting yes to Harry Reid’s health care bill.

A Rasmussen poll showed that 56% of Arkansas voters strongly opposed the Congressional health plan, while only 18% strongly favored it (65% at least somewhat opposed it and 32% somewhat for it).  Further, 74% believed the bill would raise the deficit and 83%  believed it would result in higher taxes.

Several polls prior to passage of the health care bill in the Senate had shown that voters who stated they planned to vote for Lincoln in November, said they would not vote for her if she voted for the Senate bill, which in the end she did.

Arkansans told their elected representative what they wanted, and Lincoln responded by going against the wishes of the vast majority of her constituents and simply voting along party lines.  Last week we wrote about how when push comes to shove moderate Democrats vote along party lines, rather than based on what their constituents want.

In a state that is very conservative and votes for Republican Presidential candidates, but is dominated by Democratic candidates in state and local elections, seven Republicans have already announced they will be running against Lincoln for her Senate seat.  Former state Senator Jim Holt is expected to soon make it eight Republicans.

Readers have reported that there are already billboards and radio commercials calling for Lincoln to be replaced in November, and the Republican contenders are getting a lot of air time on Arkansas talk radio stations.  They say that callers into those radio programs are very angry at what they see as a betrayal by Blanche Lincoln.

As campaigning for the 2010 elections ramp up, it will be interesting to see if other faux Blue Dog Democrats from states that vote Republican for President, but Democrat for state, local and US Congress face similar stiff challenges from Republican opponents.

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Now it would seem that a Senator, probably with ties to large construction companies or construction worker’s unions, had Reid add a last minute amendment that will hit small construction companies hard:

The Senate bill has a provision requiring businesses with over 50 employees to pay a fine of $750-per-worker fine for any employee who purchases subsidized health insurance on their own. However, the provision was amended to require construction businesses with more than five employees to pay the same fine.

The construction industry says that in these lean financial times the provision will result in many of them being forced out of business.

The amendment was inserted Wednesday morning in order to garner the necessary 60 votes to pass the bill.

Construction firms are crying foul over the provision that treats them differently from every other business with fewer than 50 employees.

It’s hard to find a realistic rationale for treating small construction companies differently than other small companies.

Like with the $100 million for a mystery hospital, it isn’t clear what Senator was bought off with this last minute change to Reid’s health care bill, but it clearly was a favor to someone, whether a Senator or union.

The National Association of Homebuilders says that if this legislation is enacted, it could bankrupt thousands of small builders that are barely hanging on after the housing market collapse.

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Mayor Bloomberg is bothered by a fact that doesn’t seem to phase Democratic Congressmen that voted for the House or Senate bill:

“”You know, if you really want to object to something in this bill, number one, I have asked congressperson after congressperson,” Bloomberg told The Huffington Post. “Not one can explain to me what’s in the bill, even in the House version — certainly not in the other version.”

“”And so for them to vote on a bill that they don’t understand whatsoever, really, you got to question how — what kind of government we have,” Bloomberg added. “Number two, when they talk about bending the curve — as the governor said — bending the curve is a flimflam euphemism for increasing costs, but we’re going to say we’ll do it at slightly lower rate than we would have otherwise.”

“”They are not talking about reducing costs,” he concluded. “They’re talking about changing the first derivate, slowing the growth down. And when you look at where the cost savings are going to be, well, they’re going to cut something out of Medicare and Medicaid. Now anybody that runs for office will tell you, you don’t do that. I mean, the bottom line is it’s so politically explosive, it really would be a first time in the history of the world that they ever cut anything [from those programs].”"

Bloomberg is raising a concern that voters all across the country have — how can a Congressman vote for a bill that he hasn’t read?

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It’s a daunting challenge.  The Republicans would need to gain 40 seats in the house to achieve a one seat majority.

Both the Republicans and Democrats have about a dozen members that have announced that they will be retiring. Most of the Republicans are in traditionally Republican districts and considered safe, while the Democratic seats are mixed.

In 1994, when the Republicans had a landslide victory with their ‘Contract with America’ campaign run by Newt Gingrich, they were able to pick up 54 seats in the house and 8 seats in the Senate.  As the campaigning for the 2010 mid-term elections ramp up, opinions are mixed in terms of whether this will be a typical mid-term election or landslide victory for the GOP like in ’94.

Foxnews reports that Larry Sabato believes it will be a typical mid-term election:

“”My guess is Republicans are on track to pick up over 20 House seats,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.  Twenty seats is the average loss for the majority party in the first midterm year after the president of that party is elected.”

“Some analysts, including Sabato, say the retirement factor is overblown. Sabato said the growing retirements are actually less important than the poor state of the economy and President Obama’s popularity in projecting GOP wins.”

“”Even if there aren’t a lot more Democratic retirements, Republicans are going to pick up a lot of seats,” he said. “The key is Obama’s popularity is not strong, and most importantly that the economy is not doing well.”"

They go on to report that Quarterly roll call says that 70 Democratic seats are considered competitive races in 2010, compared to only 32 Republican races.  Many polls are now showing Republicans leading on generic congressional ballots.  According to Rasmussen, in June, generic ballot support flipped in favor of Republicans and since then have ranged from 41-44% favoring Republicans and 37-41% favoring Democrats.

Yesterday, we reported that a number of Senate Democrats have told the White House and Harry Reid that the cap and trade bill needs to be put on hold until after the 2010 elections.  As Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) put it, “Climate change in an election year has very poor prospects.”

Many believe that election year concerns were the primary reason behind President Obama’s artificial Christmas Eve deadline.  The White House hopes that they can convince Pelosi and House Democrats to rubber stamp the Senate health care bill, so that they can get it off the front pages of the newspapers, since the more people read and hear about the Democrats ‘health care reform’ plan, the less voters support it and the Democrats pushing it.

Low turnout will likely Compound the problems the Democrats are facing in November.  In ’08, Democrats benefited from the higher than normal turnout among African American and young voters.  This high turnout was directly tied to Barack Obama.  The combination of a disenfranchised Democratic base, along with Obama not being on the ballot, will result in much lower turnout from these key groups that generally vote heavily Democrat.

The biggest wild card in the 2010 election will be the Tea Party movement.  A poll in mid December conducted by NBC News/Wall Street Journal showed that in terms of favorable/unfavorable ratings, the Tea Party topped both Republicans and Democrats.  The poll showed the Tea Party movement had a net positive (41% positive – 23% negative) approval rating, while both Democrats and Republicans had net negative ratings.

Tony Blankley of Rasmussen Reports discusses the surprising rise of the Tea Party movement:

“But all is not solidity on the right. In one of the more remarkable entrances into American politics, the “tea party” movement, which did not exist until spring, already has gained a second-place affiliation status in Scott Rasmussen’s poll. Last month’s numbers: Democratic Party, 36 percent; “tea party,” 23 percent; Republican Party, 18 percent.”

“That number is, if anything, probably understated, because the polling respondents are taken from voter registration lists. And based on what I have observed while attending “tea party” events (and from other sources), it is my sense that many “tea party” people may not even have registered to vote in the past. (They are registering now, by golly.)”

What makes this movement such a wild card is that it has a lot of unknowns.  Will it have staying power?  Will it drive conservative voters to the poll in much the way Obama drove liberal voters to the polls in ’08?

However, the biggest unknown, and concern to GOP leaders, is whether or not the Tea Party movement will ‘split the vote’.  Many in the Tea Party movement are calling for fresh blood and Tea Party candidates on the ballots in 2010.  If these new candidates run on GOP tickets, then that could be a huge positive for the Republican’s goal of taking back the House, but if the Tea Party candidates run as independents, in a first step to the creation of a third party that so many want, then that would result in splitting the conservative vote and giving those elections to the Democrats.

With eleven months to go before the mid-term elections, it’s impossible to predict whether the House will see a slight correction in favor of the Republicans, or a landslide Republican victory, as was seen in ’94.  Many conservatives hope that the combination of President Obama’s falling approval rating, combined with the Conservative Tea Party movement, will give the GOP a very good shot at taking back the House in 2010.

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It seems that cap and trade legislation is crucial to the survival of the planet — just not in an election year.

Democrats in congress are speaking out and sending a message to President Obama and Harry Reid that attempting to pass cap and trade legislation in an election year wouldn’t be smart.

It leads to the obvious question:  If cap and trade is such a great idea, why do the Democrats have to carefully time the passage of legislation to avoid a backlash on election day?

Politico reports on the message Democrats in Congress are sending to the President:

Fearful of a backlash against the costly healthcare overhaul and bracing for huge losses in the 2010 elections, Democratic leaders are urging the Obama White House to abandon efforts to pass a cap-and-trade bill next year.

“I am communicating that in every way I know how,” Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., told Politico. She’s one of at least half a dozen Democrats who’ve told the White House or their own leaders that “it’s time to jettison the centerpiece of their party’s plan to curb global warming,” Politico reported.

…

“I’d just as soon see that set aside until we work through the economy,” said Nelson, D-Neb. “What we don’t want to do is have anything get in the way of working to resolve the problems with the economy.”

“Climate change in an election year has very poor prospects,” added Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. “I’ve told that to the leadership.”

“In an election year”?  Maybe Senator Conrad and other Democrats should consider ‘why’ it has ‘poor prospects’ in an election year.  If it was a good idea – a good bill — they wouldn’t have to worry about making sure there was enough time between the passage of the bill and their re-election campaigns.

As always, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air sums it up nicely:

The very last thing the American economy needs is a new set of massive taxes on energy production.  Energy costs are multipliers in the distribution chain, and price hikes would cause prices to escalate rapidly on almost every product for sale in the US.  We would have runaway inflation at the same time we would have either negative or anemic growth, hardly a combination that wins elections for the party in power. And that doesn’t take into account the regional electoral issues in states that rely on coal for their economies — states like Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Arkansas, and Ohio, who have Democrats representing them in the Senate … for now.

The price escalation is what I have been trying to explain to people all year.  A cap and trade tax will not just make your heating, air comditioning and gas more expensive, but will go far beyond.  That Turkey you bought last week will cost more next year.  The potatoes that you mashed will cost more.  The computer you are reading this article on will cost more.  Every product you buy or service you use, will cost more.

If the cost of energy goes up, then it will cost more to manufacture products and more to ship those products.  Who pays?  President Obama and the rest of the gang of three (Reid and Pelosi), would want you to believe that it would come out of the profits of the evil corporations, but that simply isn’t true.  Consumers will pay for it in the form of across the board price hikes.

There have been some estimates that put the cost per household in the $4,000 a year range, when looking at both the increase in taxes that will be paid directly by American families and the increased costs of goods (due to the taxes that manufacturers, shippers, etc. will pay).

What Democrats like Senator Conrad are saying is that passing legislation that will cost American families $4,000 a year is a good thing, just not in an election year.  Some would argue that imposing legislation based on dodgy, possibly doctored, science that will cost American families thousands of dollars a year, is never a good idea.

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Apparently the backlash over the Senate payoffs hasn’t persuaded Nancy Pelosi from taking the same route to buy passage of the Senate bill when it comes to the House. In fact, it seems that Reid’s success in buying 60 Senate votes has emboldened Pelosi.

The wheeling and dealing has already begun in the House.  Nancy Pelosi is following the Reid Plan to buy the necessary votes to pass Obamacare.  They are targeting Bart Stupak (D-MI), because he has stated that he will not vote for the Senate’s version of the health care bill, because it uses public funds to pay for abortions.

The National Review has Stupak’s comments as he cries foul over the hush money and payoffs:

Stupak tells us that he’s disappointed that Democratic leaders have offered him legislative favors in exchange for supporting Obamacare. “This shouldn’t be a bill where you use hush money,” says Stupak. “This isn’t an appropriations bill where you try to get the best projects for your state.”

“In the House, we need to bring equity back into the process,” says Stupak. “We need to cut out those sweetheart deals.” If the deals in question are not removed, Stupak will vote against the bill. In the meantime, he says, “my reservations are growing.”

“I’ve spoken with a half-dozen members in the last 48 hours and they’re all really concerned with the Senate bill,” says Stupak. “We all agree: We’ve lost our objective with health care. Where you live should have nothing to do with the quality or cost of your coverage.”

However, for those that feel that the Stupak dozen voting no on the health care bill will prevent it from becoming law, not so fast.  ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air tells us that the removal of the public option will result in some moderates that voted no on the house bill, now voting yes to the Senate bill:

Here’s audio of him telling CNS that he has 10 to 12 people prepared to vote no; he told NRO earlier that it was actually more like a half-dozen. He’s pretty much boxed himself into a no vote at this point — although, remember, even Stupak’s been squirrelly about just how committed to the pro-life cause he is — but Pelosi’s got a long, long list of Blue Dogs she can use to replace him and any other defectors. Do note that Jason Altmire’s on it — the same guy who told Fox Business last night that there are “a lot” of Blue Dogs who voted no last time who are ready to flip for a bill without a public option. Game over.

While there is still the potential of the bill being ping-ponged in committee, the fact is that passage of this bill is simply too important to the President and Democratic leadership to allow it not to pass.  Rest assured that they will twist arms and cut whatever deals are necessary to make sure a health care bill passes.   At this point, it matters less to them ‘what’ health care bill passes, just that ‘a’ health care bill passes.

The gang of three, Obama, Pelosi and Reid, know that they need to put this health care bill to bed as soon as possible, so they can have time to spin it before the 2010 mid-term elections.  They know that anger Americans have now against the President and the Democratic Congress would mean a landslide for the Republicans if the elections were held today.  They cannot afford to have a long drawn out process of merging the House and Senate bills.

As the PUNDIT says, “game over”, but that doesn’t mean that you should stop calling your Congressmen and Senators and telling them whether you approve or disapprove of this bill, and what its passage will mean in terms of your vote in 2010.

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Ben Nelson

Ok, let’s see if we can get this straight, Senator Nelson, you thought that every state would get a free ride on the costs of Medicaid expansion?  I guess you thought the Chinese were going to pay for Nebraska’s Medicaid bill, not the other 49 states?  Have I mentioned that ocean front property I have for sale in Nebraska?  Can I interest you in a great deal on Nebraska, ocean front property, Senator?

Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) is now saying that he never asked for a ‘special deal’ for Nebraska, only a ‘fair deal’.  That it’s all Harry Reid’s fault, since all that Nelson said was that the Governor of Nebraska was concerned about the increased Medicaid costs.  Then, when Reid gave Nebraska the sweetheart deal, Senator Nelson claims that he just ‘assumed’ that every state was getting the same deal.

One question:  Didn’t you read the bill you voted on two days ago, Senator?  Surely you read the bill before you voted and knew what every news station and every American citizen knew, which is that Nebraska received a massive payoff for your vote…

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air sums it up nicely:

See what happened here? This guy thought this was politics as usual, that the Medicaid stocking stuffer for Nebraska would cushion the blow of a yes on cloture. Instead it made him look like a bribe-peddler who’d vote for an awful bill and sell out on something as morally grave as abortion in return for a cheap earmark. (As Ed noted, even DNC TV feels clammy about it.) Worse, it gave all the other pigs the idea to come running to the trough, with Politico now hailing Nelson’s deal as something that will almost singlehandedly raise the bar for legislative buyoffs going forward.

As Senator Lindsey Graham said this morning, if you are going to take the payoffs, then have the guts to get on TV and be honest about it.

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Representative Parker Griffith (D-AL) has had enough of Nancy Pelosi’s ‘leadership’ and is announcing this afternoon that he will be switching to the Republican Party.  While this move will have little impact in the House where Democrats enjoy a strong majority, it does send a strong message to other Blue Dogs.

The Town Hall meetings this summer and Tea Party events are rallying conservative voters all across the country.  It’s going to be harder and harder for democrats to call themselves moderate to win southern elections, but continue to vote with the liberal democrats in Washington.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air explains the move:

Usually one does not see Congressmen or Senators flipping parties to join the minority.  However, Politico’s Josh Kraushaar has a scoop that Blue Dog Democrat Parker Griffith of Alabama, a freshman in Congress, has seen enough of Nancy Pelosi’s leadership.  He will join Republicans in a move that has far more symbolic than substantive impact — for now

Griffith’s district has been conservative for years.  His predecessor, Democrat Bud Cramer, almost found that out the hard way in the 1994 Republican landslide, barely hanging onto his seat.  After that scare, Cramer became a solid Blue Dog, and Griffith campaigned as someone who would follow in Cramer’s footsteps.

He must have understood that the Tea Party protests would mean disaster if he supported Pelosi’s agenda.

The writing should be on the wall for southern democrats.  Honor your conservative campaign promises or suffer the consequences when you seek reelection.

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While Harry Reid and Ben Nelson have tried to sell us on the notion that no federal funds will be used to pay for abortions, the reality is that they have lied.  Or, at the very minimum, chosen words very carefully to hide the truth.

Instead, they are playing accounting tricks.  Instead of using ‘federal funds’ to pay for abortion, President Obama and Reid’s bill mandates that plan administrators must charge every person enrolled in a health care plan, in order to fund abortions for other people.  Representative John Boehner explains:

Under Reid’s “manager’s amendment,” there is no prohibition on abortion coverage in federally subsidized plans participating in the Exchange.  Instead the amendment includes layers of accounting gimmicks that demand that plans participating in the Exchange or the new government-run plan that will be managed by the Office of Personnel Management must establish “allocation accounts” when elective abortion is a covered benefit (p. 41).  Everyone enrolled in these plans must pay a monthly abortion premium (p. 41, lines 5-8), and these funds will be used to pay for the elective abortion services.  The Reid amendment directs insurance companies to assess the cost of elective abortion coverage (p. 43), and charge a minimum of $1 per enrollee per month (p. 43, lines 20-22).

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air details how HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius praises the public funded abortion mandate:

What constitutes the notion of “public funds”? If the government forces us to pay into a fund, and then controls the distribution of those funds, are those funds not “public”? Morgen at Verum Serum catches a portion of an interview between HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and BlogHer interviewer Morra Aarons-Mele yesterday, in which Sebelius praises the abortion-funding language in the Reid bill, as it maintains a flow of funds for abortion coverage that everyone — and she means everyone — supplies

Obama, Reid and company are using carefully worded public statements and accounting tricks to try and fool people into believing that the abortion ‘compromise’ is a real compromise.  In fact, all they have done is switched from using federal tax dollars to fund abortions to mandating that everyone pays at least $1 into an abortion fund.

Apparently pro-choice doesn’t extend to giving us the choice whether or not we want to fund other people’s abortions.

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Graham was asked if there is a legal problem with Ben Nelson’s deal:

Legally, I think other states can make a constitutional challenge.  Let’s let our viewers know what we are talking about here. They needed 60 votes, Ben Nelson was a hold out and instead of negotiating on C-SPAN and bringing about transparency that was promised in 2008, we wind up getting one Senator in a room where no one else knows what’s going on other than Reid and Ben Nelson and it goes sort of like this:

Reid: What do you need Ben for this last vote? I tell you what, Medicaid is expanding under this bill for everyone in the country, it’s a billion dollar increase for the people of South Carolina, what would happen if we let Nebraska increase their Medicaid enrollment and the federal government paid for it?

Nelson:  Done

I think that’s incredibly inappropriate, that’s not change we can believe in, it’s the worst in politics and this bill has no Republican support for one reason.  If it becomes law, almost 80% of the people in the country will be under some form of government health care.

Senator Graham was asked if bribery was what politics is all about? If he had ever excepted a sweetener deal for his state?

I try and advocate for the state of South Carolina, but I also try and make sure my country is doing ok too. My country means more to me than anything else when it comes to being a Senator from South Carolina. It’s not fair to my country to do this to my fellow citizens.  It’s not fair to raise $518 billion in new taxes when we are in the middle of a recession.  It’s not fair to cut Medicare by $470 billion and start a new government program.  It’s not fair to squeeze out private health care. It’s not fair to give a deal to the people of Nebraska to get one Senator’s vote and not share that deal with the rest of the country.   That’s not good politics.  That’s not normal politics.

Graham was asked again if bribery is the way things work on Capitol Hill:

In my view, no.  It’s not the way. I don’t think most Senators, believe this is ok.  If it is, just say so.  I’m on your show.  I think it stinks.  I think it’s sleazy.  Now, if you disagree with me.  You think it’s good politics, come on some show and say it’s ok with you.  Go back to your state and tell the people in your state that our Medicaid bills are going to go up, your taxes are going to go up, but we had to do this to get Nebraska on board.  Is that ok with you?  Do you think that’s fair?  I hope they get laughed out of the room.

The Senator was asked if he had ever seen anything of this scope jammed through with such a “win at any cost” approach:

Absolutely not.  Medicare passed with 79 votes.  Social Security passed with 94 votes.  The Americans with disabilities act passed with over 90 votes.  I’ve never seen, in my time in politics, an effort by one party to jam the other party and change 1/6th of the economy and not be able to get one Republican on board.  I will put my bi-partisan credentials up against anyone.  I’ve been in the gang of 14.  I worked on immigration.  I voted for Sotomayor.  They have not reached out to any Republican in a meaningful way, because at the end of the day their goal is to get more people covered by the government.  We go from 60% of Americans in government run health care to 80% of Americans in government run health care, and no Republican is going to vote for that, including Lindsey Graham or Olympia Snowe.

We’re up here to run a country and we’re up here to help people.  I want to expand coverage.  I want to do away with preexisting illness exclusions. I don’t want to run up the debt that’s beyond the ability for the next generation to pay.  I don’t want to become Europe when it comes to health care.  And, it’s frustrating to have an amendment filed on Saturday, 400 pages, and the tree be filled so that we could not amend the amendment.  It’s frustrating to have a 2,500 page bill jammed through the Senate the day before Christmas and be shut out of the process.  This is not going to help this country solve health care, and if you have private health care today, your premiums are going to go up, and you’re going to be crowded out of the marketplace and will eventually be in a government run health care plan.

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As we have seen in recent weeks, once the dust settled on the ACORN videos, Democrats in the Obama administration and Congress are slowly beginning to quietly support ACORN again.

The defunding votes were essentially CYA/public relations votes, with no intention to actually cut off funding to ACORN.

Now, it appears that President Obama and Harry Reid have included a provision in the health care bill to funnel money to to the liberal group ACORN, which was such a big part of Obama’s victory in the 2008 election.

Publius at Big Government explains:

Senator Roland Burris is claiming credit for a provision in Harry Reid’s “manager’s amendment,” unveiled Saturday morning, that could funnel money to ACORN through the health care bill…

The provision he cites, found on pages 240 through 248 of the manager’s amendment, requires that six different agencies each establish an “Office of Minority Health.” The agencies are the “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.”…

According to a Senate legislative aide, the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now could qualify for grants under this provision. ACORN would also qualify for funding on page 150 of the underlying Reid bill, which says that “community and consumer-focused nonprofit groups” may receive grants to “conduct public education activities to raise awareness of the availability of qualified health plans.”

How President Obama’s administration and the Democrats in Congress can continue supporting ACORN after the investigations of election fraud and videos showing workers giving advice to prostitutes concerning defrauding the IRS, while engaged in child prostitution, is amazing.

Obama owes ACORN a lot, considering how their non-partisan workers picked up homeless people, took them to the polls and told them “vote for Obama”.  In Ohio, during the register and vote drive that occurred four weeks before the election, ACORN workers had people register and vote multiple times, and told them to vote for Obama.

It appears that repaying debts is more important than honoring the constitution and the laws of this nation.

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Michelle Malkin documents the multiple bribes and purchased votes in Obama and Reid’s health care bill:

A month ago, I compiled Part I of the Demcare bribe list as Harry Reid rushed before Thanksgiving to secure his first cloture vote on the government health care takeover. (Quick re-cap: $300 million Louisiana Purchase for Landrieu; $300 million California doctor payments; AARP goodies; abortion and union lobby concessions.)

1. Sen. Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker Kickback.” The CBO says the Nebraska Democrat sellout’s special Medicaid expansion subsidy will initially cost an estimated $100 million.

…

1. 2. New England’s Special Syrup. Vermont and Massachusetts will get similar (though less generous) special treatment by the feds in covering Medicaid expansion costs. Combined with Nebraska’s tab, the exclusive clique’s payoffs will cost taxpayers $1.2 billion over 10 years. At least.

Malkin goes on to detail six other payoffs to Senators that are contained in Harry Reid’s health care bill.  These include:

Senator Dodd getting $100 million for construction of a university hospital

Senator Nelson getting a tax exemption for Mutual of Omaha insurance in Nebraska

Bernie Sanders got $10 billion to open government run, community health centers, which Sanders a self proclaimed socialist, calls a first step towards universal health care.

It’s important to remember that this is YOUR money they are playing “let’s make a deal” with.  While it’s true that debate and compromise are an important part of the legislative process, payoffs and intimidation have no place in it.

The President and the Democrats in Congress keep reminding us that health care is 1/6^th of our economy and the country can’t afford to do nothing, but something the American public have clearly told Congress in the Town Hall meetings and in the recent polling data is that we also can’t afford to get this wrong.  Change for the sake of change or to pander to a liberal base, is not acceptable to the majority of Americans.

It’s time to let your Senators and President Obama know that if this bill is in fact signed into law that they will not be re-elected.

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Ed Morrissey of Hot Air says:

Harry Reid passed his cloture bill a few hours ago, forcing the Senate to remain in session while America slept in order to meet an arbitrary deadline for his version of ObamaCare.  As expected after the reversal of Ben Nelson (D-NE), Reid got his bill past its second procedural hurdle, thanks to some arm-twisting … and vote buying.

What happened to all of the promises of transparency, bi-partisan debate, the end of back-room deals and bills loaded with earmarks, changing the way Washington works — the list goes on.

President Obama campaigned on transparency and stopping earmark laden bills.  He promised the American people that the health care debate would be televised on C-SPAN so that back room deals weren’t cut.  Take a look at this short video:

Shame, that’s what Obama said would be needed to make Congress do the right thing.

That [health care debate televised on C-SPAN] builds in accountability in the system.  Because, now that congressman is put on the spot.  And, I would not underestimate the degree to which shame is a healthy emotion and that you can shame congress into doing the right thing, if people know what’s going on.

“If people know what’s going on.”  First, the Senate bill was worked on behind closed doors, only including Senate Democrats and White House staff.  Then, the President had multiple meetings ONLY with Senate Democrats.  Finally, Harry Reid’s Managers amendment was worked on almost exclusively by Reid’s staff and the White House staff, not even including most Senate Democrats in the process.  “If People know what’s going on” those were the President’s words.

Did you know what was going on?  I certainly didn’t know the details.  My neighbors didn’t.  My co-workers didn’t.  “If people know what’s going on…”

Harry Reid hid the contents of the managers amendment until the last possible moment.  Releasing it on the weekend before Christmas, when most American’s are distracted with the upcoming holiday.  He calls for a vote at 1:00 am, when most people are in bed getting ready for the next day of work.  He leads a gang of 60 to vote 100% along party lines — possibly the first time in history that a major reform was passed 100% along party lines.

President Obama got it partially right.  Shame is clearly a powerful emotion, but rather than forcing Congress to do the right thing, it simply forced Harry Reid to scurry into the shadows, into the dark of night, and hold one of the most important votes in American history in the middle of the night.

The morning after, all that is left to say is shame, shame on you Mr. President for failing to honor your commitment to America.

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Mitch McConnell

Mitch McConnell has released a statement following the vote on the health care bill.  He outlines some of the most egregious payoffs that Reid put in the bill to buy votes.

The Gateway Pundit has the statement from Mitch McConnell:

“Tonight marks the culmination of a long national debate. Passions have run high. And, that’s appropriate because the bill we are voting on tonight will impact the life of every American. It will shape the future of our country. It will determine whether our children can afford the nation they inherit.  It is one of the most consequential votes any of us will ever take. And none of us take it lightly.

“But make no mistake: if the people who wrote this bill were proud of it, they wouldn’t be forcing this vote in the dead of night

“Here are just some of the deals we’ve noticed:

“$100 million for an unnamed health care facility at an unnamed university somewhere in the United States — the bill doesn’t say where — and no one will even step forward to claim it.

“ One state out of 50 gets to expand Medicaid at no cost to itself — while taxpayers in the other 49 states pick up the tab.

“The same Senator who cut that deal secured another one that benefits a single insurance company – just one insurance company – based in his state.

“Do the supporters of this bill know all this?  Do they think it’s a fair deal for their states, for the rest of the country?

“The fact is, a year after this debate started few people could have imagined that this is how it would end — with a couple of cheap deals and a rushed vote at one o’clock in the morning.  But that’s where we are.

“And Americans are wondering tonight: How did this happen?

“So I’d like to take a moment to explain to the American people how we got here, to explain what happened — and what’s happening now.

“Everyone in this chamber agrees we need health care reform. The question is how?

“Some of us have taken the view that the American people want us to tackle the cost issue, and we’ve proposed targeted steps to do it.  Our friends on the other side have taken the opposite approach.

“And the result has been just what you’d expect.

“The final product is a mess — and so is the process that’s brought us here to vote on a bill that the American people overwhelmingly oppose.

“Any challenge of this size and scope has always been dealt with on a bipartisan basis.  The senior Senator from Maine made that point at the outset of the debate, and reminded us all how these things have been handled throughout history..

“The Social Security Act of 1935 was approved by all but six members of the Senate.  The Medicare and Medicaid Acts of 1965 were approved by all but 21.  All but eight senators voted for the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

“Americans believe that on issues of this importance, one party should never be allowed to force its will on the other half of the nation.  The proponents of this bill felt differently.

“In a departure from history, Democrat leaders put together a bill so heavy with tax hikes, Medicare cuts and government intrusion, that, in the end their biggest problem wasn’t convincing Republicans to support it, it was convincing the Democrats.

“In the end, the price of passing this bill wasn’t achieving the reforms Americans were promised.

“It was a blind call to make history, even if it was a historical mistake — which is exactly what this bill will be if it’s passed.  Because, in the end, this debate isn’t about differences between two parties, it’s about a $2.3 trillion dollar, 2,733-page health care reform bill that does not reform health care and, in fact, makes its price go up.

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David Janda of Big Government describes this gift that Obama, Reid and Pelosi are giving us:

The Grinches’ first “present” is to “allow” everyone in Medicare, or who will soon be in Medicare, to pay for a larger percentage of the costs of this beast. How special is that? The Grinches Obama, Pelosi and Reid have decided to cut Medicare by $500 Billion over ten years to pay for their reform package, even though millions more seniors will be on Medicare in ten years. Let’s look at the data that the Grinches refuse to acknowledge.

According to the United States Census Bureau:

1.40 Million Americans currently are ages 55-64
2.50% of those aged 55-64 have at least 4 or more health care visits per year
3.42 Million Americans currently are age 65 or over
4.35% of those over 65 have 3 or more chronic conditions
5.29% of those over 65 are in fair or poor health
6.In 10 years 62 Million Americans will be 65 or over
So, in ten years an additional 22 Million Americans will fall under Medicare, at the same time the Grinches will cut $500 Billion out of Medicare. Worse, they expect us Whos to believe that there will be no rationing of care by the already established rationing board from the stimulus bill ( Federal Coordinating Council For Comparative Effectiveness Research) and Medicare Commission from the Senate bill.

The Grinches further claim Medicare is the epitome of success and cost effectiveness and a program we should all look forward to joining. In fact, one of their “potential” presents, still on the drawing board, is to “allow” everyone 55-64 years of age the “opportunity” to join Medicare.  This is the same Medicare that:

Was established in 1965
Cost $ 3 Billion in 1966
Cost $325 Billion in 2005
Cost $408 Billion in 2009 (12 % increase every year for 43 years)
From 2000-2007 paid DEAD physicians 478,500 claims totaling $92 Million  (U.S. Senate Permanent Committee on Investigation)

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You’ve got to love the way Michelle Malkin can sum up a situation in a colorful way.  On the Payoff Harry Reid put into the health care bill to buy Ben Nelson’s vote, she says “Sellout Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) got his Cash-for-Cloture Christmas present early.” Pretty accurate, wouldn’t you say?

Michelle not only has a great grasp of politics, but it’s also enjoyable to watch her interviews and read her columns and books.  It would be even more enjoyable if the stakes weren’t so high.

As I have been documenting on Liberal Whoppers, Malkin talks about the many promises that President Obama, Harry Reid and the other Senators have broken.  Malkin sums it up:

THEY LIE.

Time is of the essence. Here’s the rundown of the next 24 hours:

“Following the remarks of Senator Coburn, the Senate will adjourn until 1:00pm Sunday, December 20. Following the prayer and pledge, the time until 1:30pm will be equally divided and controlled between the two Leaders or their designees. Beginning at 1:30pm and until 11:30pm, there will be alternating blocks of time, with the Republicans controlling the first hour and the Majority controlling the next hour.

At 11:30pm (Sunday), the Senate will recess until 12:01am Monday, December 21. Following the prayer and pledge, the time until 1:00am will be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Majority Leader controlling the final 10 minutes and the Republican Leader controlling the 10 minutes immediately prior.

At 1:00AM Monday, December 21, the Senate will proceed to a cloture vote on the Reid-Baucus-Dodd-Harkin amendment #2376.”

It isn’t too late, contact your Senators and let them know that you will not stand for the lies and deceit that Harry Reid and the Democrats in the Senate are using to pass a health care bill that two thirds of Americans don’t want.

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Let’s recount some of the promises that President Obama and Democratic members of Congress have made:

• Obama will reach across party lines and work closely with Republicans on key legislature
• Health care amounts for 1/6 of the US economy and it is crucial to get it right
• The White House will be the most transparent administration in history and will change the way Washington works
• Obama promised that the health care reform would not happen with deals made behind closed doors, but instead the process would be public and televised on C-SPAN
• Obama stated that earmark reform was critical and that he would go line by line through every bill presented to him to insure they aren’t loaded with earmarks

Has ONE single thing that President Obama and the Democrats in Congress said about health care reform been true?  Have they followed through on one promise to the American people about changing how Washington works?

The negotiations have not only been 100% partisan, but have occurred behind closed doors — not televised on C-SPAN as Obama promised.

Not only has President Obama broken his promise and signed into law bills with many thousands  of earmarks, but this new health care bill has blatant payoffs to a handful of Senators that wouldn’t vote for cloture without getting something in return.

The President, along with members of Congress pledged transparency and stated that they would post bills on public websites so that American voters would have time to read and give feedback to their representatives BEFORE they voted on bills.

Doctor Zero of Hot Air summarizes the state of the bill:

Far from being a brilliant plan constructed by top doctors and financial experts in a government brain trust, this health-care bill is a twisted, deformed political document, seen in its entirety by only a few high-ranking politicians belonging to a single political party. Its components have not been precisely crafted as part of a fantastic system calibrated to ensure the maximum access to quality health care for all Americans.

The bill is not being examined with transparency and careful deliberation by representatives who behave as humble servants of the people and their Constitution. Instead, it’s being hastily rammed through in the dead of night, over the objection of powerful majorities of the American people, with desperate last-minute deals cut to acquire the necessary votes, financed by vast sums of taxpayer money. The primary consideration is not crafting the most sophisticated and intelligent health care reform… it’s getting a bill pushed through before angry voters have a chance to blast the Democrats out of Congress. Look at it this way: if the average middle-class American paid about $5000 in federal income tax last year, then you might be one of the 20,000 people who paid for Mary Landrieu’s vote, in the hope of giving Barack Obama a bill to sign as a Christmas present.

Now, in the dark of night, at 1:00 am Monday morning, Harry Reid will summon his 60 Democrats in to vote for cloture in order to end debate, before debate has ever begun.  The vote for cloture is essentially the ‘real’ vote for the health care bill, because they will have no problem getting 51 Democrats for the final vote on Obamacare.

Once again, they are counting on the stupidity of the American public.  They believe that Senators like Blanch Lincoln can get away with carefully worded false statements like, “I didn’t vote for the health care bill, I voted against it. My opponents are trying to confuse you.  The vote they refer to is simply a procedural vote that must take place before the real vote on a bill can take place…”

They are counting on the fact that most Americans are distracted by Christmas.  That many conservative talk show hosts who would normally be screaming about this bastardization of the legislative process are off on their Christmas holidays.

They are counting on the fact that voters in 2010 won’t punish their representatives for what they did in 2009.

In 10 1/2 months, we will see if Obama and friends are right.  Are American voters as stupid as President Obama and the Democrats in Congress think?

Let’s hope not.  Let’s hope that the American voters send Obama and company a message that we counted on our representatives to vote in our best interests, and since they didn’t we will pull a Donald Trump on them and say, “you’re fired!”

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Harry Reid and President Obama are trying to use sleight of hand and cries of urgency to perpetrate a fraud on the citizens of the United States of America, again.

Earlier in the month, in yet another free commercial for the President, also known as a Charlie Gibson interview, President Obama stated that if we didn’t pass the health care bill the federal government “will go bankrupt.”  It’s an emergency, we don’t have time to let the Senators read the bill!  Where have we heard this before?

In June Obama and Pelosi rushed through their cap and trade bill.  No congressman was given time to read the managers amendment (like with Harry Reid’s health care bill, it was the meat of the bill), before being forced to vote on it.

In February, Obama and Pelosi brought the stimulus bill to the floor for an emergency vote.  It had to be passed without anyone having time to read it, because it would ensure the unemployment rate wouldn’t reach double digits and it would prevent an economic collapse.  It’s ironic that it took roughly six months to dole out the first 10% of the ‘emergency’ stimulus bill, which contained roughly 5,000 earmarks — mostly in Democratic districts.  When pushing the ‘emergency nature’ of the stimulus bill, President Obama stated “if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits.”  Have you checked the unemployment rate lately, Mr. President?

Now, back to Reid and Obama’s health care bill.

Harry Reid is at best being disingenuous and at worse he is lying through his teeth.  He claims that this bill will reduce the deficit, but that is only because of sleight of hand.  The bill has ten years of tax increases (revenue), but only 6 years of costs.   It’s amazing that he can’t show an even bigger reduction in the deficit than $132 billion.  With four extra years of increased taxes and cuts to Medicare, before the spending begins, he can only show a reduction of $132 billion.  It’s scary to think about what the real cost would be if he didn’t apply his ten years of revenue and six years of cost trick (rumor has it Reid sought advice from Michael Mann and Phil Jones about how to manipulate data).

The Weekly Standard has published the numbers that Harry Reid doesn’t want you to see.  They have created an apples to apples cost breakdown, looking at the first ten years where both the tax increases and cost increases are in effect:

The Democrats are irresponsibly and disingenuously claiming that the bill would cost $871 billion over 10 years. But that’s not what the CBO says. Rather, the CBO says that $871 billion would be the costs from 2010 to 2019 for expansions in insurance coverage alone. But less than 2 percent of those “10-year costs” would kick in before the fifth year of that span. In its real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), the CBO says that the bill would cost $1.8 trillion — for insurance coverage expansions alone. Other parts of the bill would cost approximately $700 billion more, bringing the bill’s full 10-year tab to approximately $2.5 trillion — according to the CBO.

In those real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), Americans would have to pay over $1 trillion in additional taxes, over $1 trillion would be siphoned out of Medicare (over $200 billion out of Medicare Advantage alone) and spent on Obamacare, and deficits would rise by over $200 billion. They would rise, that is, unless Congress follows through on the bill’s pledge to cut doctors’ payments under Medicare by 21 percent next year and never raise them back up — which would reduce doctors’ enthusiasm for seeing Medicare patients dramatically.

And what would Americans get in return for this staggering sum? Well, the CBO says that health care premiums would rise, and the Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says that the percentage of the Gross Domestic Product spent on health care would rise from 17 percent today to 21 percent by the end of 2019. Nationwide health care costs would be $234 billion higher than under current law. How’s that for “reform”?

So, the bill does not cost $871 billion like Harry Reid claims, but $2.5 trillion, yes that is trillion with a “T”, in the first REAL ten years that the health care bill is in effect.

Now, some of the ‘cost savings’ they tout as ‘bending the cost curve’ is to cut Medicare payouts to doctors by 21%.  The Mayo Clinic, which President Obama referred to as ‘the model for health care reform’, has said that expanding Medicare will accelerate the financial ruin of hospitals and doctors.  Now, Reid proposes that in order to ‘bend the cost curve’ they will simply pay doctors and hospitals less:

Expanding this system to persons 55 to 64 years old would ultimately hurt patients by accelerating the financial ruin of hospitals and doctors across the country. A majority of Medicare providers currently suffer great financial loss under the program. Mayo Clinic alone lost $840 million last year under Medicare. As a result of these types of losses, a growing number of providers have begun to limit the number of Medicare patients in their practices.  Despite these provider losses, Medicare has not curbed overall spending, especially after adjusting for benefits covered and the cost shift from Medicare to private insurance.  This is clearly an unsustainable model, and one that would be disastrous for our nation’s hospitals, doctors and eventually our patients if expanded to even more beneficiaries.

The Price is Right!

Not only has Harry Reid deceived the American people about the true costs of his ‘health care reform’, but he has included what can only be called ‘payoffs’ or ‘bribes’ for the Senators that balked about voting for cloture.  Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) was given $300 million of Medicaid subsidies, in order to secure her vote.  Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) both got tax exemptions (new tax on insurers) for Blue Cross and Mutual of Omaha located in Nebraska, but Reid also wrote into the bill that Nebraska would NEVER have to pay any increase in Medicaid costs.  The other 49 states will see a sharp increase in their Medicaid costs after the federal matching funds stop in 2017, but Nebraska will be subsidized forever by increasing the taxes on the other 49 states to cover Nelson’s payoff.  Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont threatened to vote against cloture, because the public option was pulled, so Reid threw Vermont additional Medicaid matching funds to buy Sanders’ cooperation.

Is there any wonder that Reid and Obama are pushing for votes in the middle of the night and to pass this bill during Christmas week, when most Americans are distracted  and with many conservative talk show hosts taking time off for Christmas.  President Obama and Harry Reid are counting on the fact that the bill will be passed before most people understand what it contains.

It’s time to rename our fine country the United States of Chicago, because Chicago-style politics have taken hold and are becoming the norm in Washington.

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Senators Lincoln, Bayh, Landrieu, Lieberman, McCaskill, Nelson, Pryor and Webb all committed in October to a transparent process on health care reform, which would include the health care bill being on a public website for at least 72 hours before the first vote (cloture) would be made.  They claimed they wanted this to give their constituents time to read key bills and amendments and then contact their Senators with feedback.

Earlier we posted a link to a contact page for key Senators in the cloture vote.  It’s time to pick up the phone or log onto the computer and let these Senators know what you think of the Barack Obama, Chicago-Style politics that Harry Reid is using to force a health care bill through, simply because Obama wants it by Christmas (which incidentally is a word Dems of virtually struck from our public vocabulary).

Here is the  article from our friends at the Patriot Room that includes the letter:

This is a letter from October 2009. Note the signatories. Will Lincoln, Webb, and Bayh step forward now?

Full text:

October 6, 2009

The Honorable Harry Reid

Senate Majority Leader

S-221 United States Capitol

Washington, DC 20510

Dear Leader Reid:

As you know, Americans across our country have been actively engaged in the debate on health care reform. Whether or not our constituents agree with the direction of the debate, many are frustrated and lacking accurate information on the emerging proposals in Congress. Without a doubt, reforming health care in America is one of the most monumental and far-reaching undertakings considered by this body in decades. We believe the American public’s participation in this process is critical to our overall success of creating a bill that lowers health care costs and offers access to quality and affordable health care for all Americans.

Every step of the process needs to be transparent, and information regarding the bill needs to be readily available to our constituents before the Senate starts to vote on legislation that will affect the lives of every American. The legislative text and complete budget scores from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) of the health care legislation considered on the Senate floor should be made available on a website the public can access for at least 72 hours prior to the first vote to proceed to the legislation. Likewise, the legislative text and complete CBO scores of the health care legislation as amended should be made available to the public for 72 hours prior to the vote on final passage of the bill in the Senate. Further, the legislative text of all amendments filed and offered for debate on the Senate floor should be posted on a public website prior to beginning debate on the amendment on the Senate floor. Lastly, upon a final agreement between the House of Representatives and the Senate, a formal conference report detailing the agreement and complete CBO scores of the agreement should be made available to the public for 72 hours prior to the vote on final passage of the conference report in the Senate.

By publically posting the legislation and its CBO scores 72 hours before it is brought to a vote in the Senate and by publishing the text of amendments before they are debated, our constituents will have the opportunity to evaluate these policies and communicate their concerns or their message of support to their Members of Congress. As their democratically-elected representatives in Washington, D.C., it is our duty to listen to their concerns and to provide them with the chance to respond to proposals that will impact their lives. At a time when trust in Congress and the U.S. government is unprecedentedly low, we can begin to rebuild the American people’s faith in their federal government through transparency and by actively inviting Americans to participate in the legislative process.

We respectfully request that you agree to these principles before moving forward with floor debate of this legislation. We appreciate your serious consideration and look forward to working with you on health care reform legislation in the weeks ahead.

Sincerely,

Senator Blanche L. Lincoln

Senator Evan Bayh

Senator Mary L. Landrieu

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman

Senator Claire McCaskill

Senator Ben Nelson

Senator Mark L. Pryor

Senator Jim Webb

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The health care task force has put together a page with contact information (twitter, facebook, email, phone) for seven key senators in Harry Reid’s attempt to rush his health care bill through before anyone has had time to read it.

If they vote for cloture without reading it, like Reid wants, then debate will be over and they will only need 51 votes to pass the bill.

The Senators listed on the contact page are: Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Michael Bennet, Byron Dorgan, Evan Bayh, Arlen Specter or Jim Webb.

Let those Senators know what you think.

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As was expected to be the case, Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) has announced he will vote for cloture on Harry Reid’s health care bill.

At this point, we know that the bill contains language that Nebraska will receive federal matching funds for the expanded medical costs for three years, where other states will only receive matching funds for two years (there was also a deal cut with Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and possibly others, that provide for special deals for their states).

We had previously reported on the rumors that Ben Nelson was both threatened with base closures if he didn’t vote for cloture, and offered $500 million in earmarks if he did vote for it.

If you want to dig into the legislative language, here is the Managers Amendment (you can also view it below) that Reid has been working on behind closed doors and is the meat of the health care bill or view it below:

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey of Hot Air gives us this update on the abortion compromise:

Scroll down to Section 1303, which uses the same reliance on the “prohibited under HHS rules” dodge as the earlier Senate version, rather than using the language from the Stupak Amendment in the House that explicitly prohibited public money from funding abortions or abortion coverage. If Congress fails to renew the Hyde Amendment for just one year, this language will become moot. This version will lose none of the progressives, because they know they can just kill the Hyde Amendment renewal now to eliminate the problem.

Nelson caved on abortion and sold out for an extra year of federal Medicaid subsidies.

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The Examiner reports Reid’s shenanigans:

Senate Democrats are threatening Republicans with midnight and crack-of-dawn votes if they continue to fight the majority on the health-care bill and defense spending legislation.

The Senate Democratic leadership office is advising lawmakers, staff and reporters that if the GOP does not yield back time on the defense spending bill now under consideration, a vote will be scheduled for Friday morning at 1 a.m., with final passage slated for 7 a.m. Saturday morning.

…

“No one besides Harry Reid has even seen the bill,” DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton said. “If Democrats won’t read their own bill, they’ll be forced to have every page read to them on the Senate floor. Americans have rejected this government takeover of health care, and Republicans will do whatever is possible to stop them from ramming this through before Christmas.”

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Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has more on Pelosi’s refusal to support President Obama:

If anyone at the White House thought that Barack Obama became the “decider” on military matters on January 20th, Nancy Pelosi just gave them a little bit of education in Democratic politics.  Obama needs Congress to appropriate funds for a 30,000-troop increase in Afghanistan, but Pelosi won’t lift a finger to help.  Instead, it will be up to Republicans to get the President his money.

…

Let’s unpack that promise first.  Democrats spent 2007 and 2008 excoriating George Bush for under-resourcing the war in Afghanistan.  Barack Obama ran on the promise that he would fight more aggressively in Afghanistan.  When Obama took office, he officially adopted the COIN strategy that he had backed for two years on the campaign trail, cheered by throngs of adoring Democrats, including every one of them in Congress.

Falling poll numbers, a majority of Americans not happy with Obamacare and new polls showing that the Tea Party movement has more positive support than the Democratic party, all appear to be taking its toll and creating a divide among Democrats in Washington.

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The hope was that Lieberman would give the Democrats the 60 votes they needed to vote for cloture and avoid a Republican filibuster.  It appears that Senator Burris (D-IL)  has other ideas.  Burris believes that any bill without a strong public option is a compromise that he is not willing to accept.

Newsmax reported on the Senator’s comments on Tuesday:

Senator Roland W. Burris, the controversial Democrat of Illinois who filled Barack Obama’s former seat, says he will not vote for a healthcare bill that does not include a government-run insurance plan.

“I am committed to voting for a bill that achieves the goals of a public option: competition, cost savings and accountability,” he said. “I will not be able to vote for lesser legislation that ignores those fundamentals.”

This move by Burris makes Reid’s attempt to win Republican Senator Olympia Snowe’s vote that much more important.  While it appears likely that President Obama will get his vote before Christmas, Harry Reid must feel like he is herding cats, as he makes one compromise after another, one payoff after another, and one threat after another.

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Senator Snowe confirmed today that Harry Reid told her that both the expansion of Medicare (lowering to age 55) and the public option are now off the table.  With several Democratic Senators still up in the air on their support for the bill, Reid is trying to get Republicans like Snowe to cross the line.

TPM reports on the meeting between Reid and Snowe:

It wasn’t much in doubt, but Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) confirmed to reporters tonight that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid assured her all of the contentious aspects of the public option compromise–particularly the Medicare buy-in provision–have been dropped.

The two met this afternoon so that Reid could gauge the likelihood that she’ll ultimately vote with the Democrats, at least to push the bill past a filibuster.

He assured you that the Medicare buy-in and the public option are out, I asked?

“Correct,” she said.

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Now that Joe Lieberman’s vote is in the bag with the expansion of Medicare being removed from the bill last night, it appears the Senate is prepared to use both a carrot and stick to get Nelson on board — whatever it takes.

Redstate is reporting:

The White House and Democratic Leadership in the Senate has told Senator Nelson they will close every military base in Nebraska — a threat that is not credible, really — but they have also offered Senator Nelson between $300 million to $500 million in earmarks, according to key hill health care operatives. These hundreds of millions will be available for whatever he wants to spend them on in Nebraska.

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TPM is reporting that Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) has said that the Medicare option is going to be pulled:

Asked by a reporter if the Medicare buy-in will be pulled out, Harkin said “looks that way,” before praising a Democratic health care bill without the two public option compromises.

“There’s enough good in this bill that even without those two, we gotta move,” he said. “All the insurance reforms, all the stuff we wrote so hard for prevention and wellness in there, the workforce development issues that we have in there, the reimbursement based on quality not on quantity — there’s good stuff in this bill. It’s a giant step forward, changing the paradigm of health care in America.”

UPDATE:  Senator Max Baucus spoke to press after the Democratic caucus meeting and confirmed that the medicare/public option is likely dead.  The Patriot Room reports:

After a tense 90-minute meeting on Monday evening, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, was asked if Democrats were likely to jettison the Medicare proposal.

“It’s looking like that’s the case,” Mr. Baucus said, indicating that the provision might be scrapped as a way of “getting support from 60 senators.”

UPDATE 2:  Here is the Hot Air take on this:

Lieberman said he can (read: will) vote for the bill without the public plan provisions. Reaction, straight off the top of my head: (1) Kind of surprising that neither Snowe nor Collins defected to bail Reid out, eh? Now that he’s back to 60-ish, I wonder if they or Nelson, Bayh, Lincoln, etc. will suddenly ramp up their own demands. (2) The Democrats are so frantic to pass something at this point — e.g., there was a rumor floated earlier today that Emanuel was pressuring Reid to use reconciliation — that Pelosi will almost certainly want to ping-pong the Senate bill. Will the absence of a public option convince Blue Dogs who voted no on the House bill to vote yes this time or will the gruesome polling scare them away? If they do vote yes, are there enough of them to make up for the number of House progressives who will surely vote no this time? (3) Further to the last point, what about the abortion conflict now? The House bill banned abortion funding, the Senate bill allows it. If Bart Stupak and his pro-life Blue Dogs are serious, they can probably kill the whole project. I wonder if Reid will let Nelson reintroduce an abortion funding ban in the Senate and force it through to eliminate that problem. I still don’t see how they’re getting this all done by New Year’s, though.

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Over the weekend, the President gave a pep talk to the Senate Democratic caucus on Capital Hill, and now he’s calling them to the White House to take another shot at it.

President Obama is using a full court press to try and get Obamacare passed before the Christmas recess.  He is trying to deal with the fact that some Senators have said they would not vote for a bill that didn’t contain a public option, and others that said they wouldn’t vote for a bill that increases the debt or that doesn’t have a prohibition on the use of federal funds to pay for abortions.

Foxnews reports on the Tuesday afternoon meeting at the White House:

Even an expansion of Medicare, initially proposed as a backup to the government insurance option, appeared unlikely to survive following a closed-door senators-only meeting of the Democratic caucus called to consider trade-offs necessary to assure 60 votes for the bill. Medicare is the government program providing health care benefits to the elderly.

“Put me down tonight as encouraged about the direction these talks are going,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, said late Monday, only 24 hours after he rattled Democrats by threatening to oppose the legislation over the Medicare expansion provision.

Obama invited all Senate Democrats to the White House for a meeting Tuesday afternoon that held promise of a unity event. Obama needs every one of them to hang together to give him the 60 votes required to overcome Republicans united in opposition to the sweeping health overhaul measure.

Majority Leader Harry Reid promised to deliver.

“I’m confident that by next week we will be on our way toward final passage of a bill that saves lives, saves money and saves Medicare,” Reid told reporters after Monday night’s meeting.

Liberals had sought the Medicare expansion as a last-minute substitute for a full-blown, government-run insurance program that moderates insisted be removed from the legislation. But it drew strong opposition from Lieberman and quieter concerns from other Democrats — all of whom hold votes essential for passage.

Reid did not say flatly that Democrats had decided to drop the proposal for uninsured Americans as young as 55 to purchase coverage under Medicare, the government program now open to people when they turn 65. But several senators said it appeared inevitable.

“We’re not going to get all that we want but we’re going to get so much more than we have,” liberal Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia said.

If you oppose this health care bill, this may be your last chance to contact your Senator and let him or her know your feelings, as we are likely to see a vote this week.

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Politico is reporting that the White House is ordering Reid to cut a deal with Liberman, which could include removing the Medicare expansion from the bill:

The White House is encouraging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to cut a deal with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), which would mean eliminating the proposed Medicare expansion in the health reform bill, according to an official close to the negotiations.

But Reid is described as so frustrated with Lieberman that he is not ready to sacrifice a key element of the health care bill, and first wants to see the Congressional Budget Office cost analysis of the Medicare buy-in. The analysis is expected early this week.

“There is a weariness and a lot of frustration that one person is holding up the will of 59 others,” the official said. “There is still too much anger and confusion at one particular senator’s reversal.”

Further support for this story is that Hot Air is reporting that President Obama has summoned Senate Democrats to the White House and describes why this story is likely true:

If it’s kabuki, why send the bill to CBO to be scored? Reid could simply hold onto it, wait for Lieberman to preemptively shoot it down, and then claim the “ol’ college try” political cover he needs to please the left. By sending it to CBO, he’s taking a risk: Given the crumbling polls and wavering by Blue Dogs like Nelson and Lincoln, if it comes back graded as a budget-buster, centrists may decide that there’s no way to get to 60 and the whole thing could collapse. Don’t forget either that they’re desperate to pass this by Christmas so that public anger will cool a bit over the holidays and The One will have a major accomplishment to stroke in his State of the Union speech. If it drags into January — as one Senate aide tells John Hawkins will certainly happen — those benefits are lost, which leaves Reid with little time now to mess around with kabuki. In fact, according to Politico, if they don’t hold a cloture vote by the end of this week, this thing ain’t happening in December. Besides, if it’s all kabuki, why rely on Lieberman to be a scapegoat “no” vote instead of recruiting your own? Mark Pryor comes from a red state and isn’t up for reelection until 2014; progressives aren’t going to go after him and give up a seat, especially that far into the future.

This appears to be another case of “with the help of the liberal media, we can sell anything to the American voters.”  Reid and leading Democratic Senators really believed that they could sell an expansion of Medicare, a single payer system, to the American voters as a compromise and a better solution than a public option.  In fact, Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) described the ‘compromise’ expansion of medicare as “an unvarnished, complete victory for people like me who have been arguing for a single-payer system.”

While it is a topic too big for this post, anyone that knows people in England or Canada and have heard the first hand stories of their National Health Services, know the many failings of single payer, government run health care system.

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Joe Lieberman’s comments on the proposed ‘compromise’:

“Though I don’t know exactly what’s in it, from what I hear, I certainly would have a hard time voting for it because it has some of the same infirmities that the public option did.

“It will add taxpayer costs. It will add to the deficit. It’s unnecessary,” he added of a provision that Reid last week hailed as part of a breakthrough between liberals and moderates.

…

Lieberman pleaded with Democrats to start subtracting expensive proposals from the overhaul, saying, “We don’t need to keep adding onto the back of this horse or we’re going to break the horse’s back and get nothing done.”

Lieberman joins Democrat Claire McCaskill in publicly stating on Sunday an opposition to the current proposal.  Both have indicated that they will not vote for a bill that increases costs, which the Medicare expansion will do.

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“The deniers want to create a Siberian tree ring circus,” Markey said. “They want to take a small percentage of this entire study, a couple pages of it — 1,000 pages — and throw out the conclusion. … The real scandal will be is if we don’t solve this problem for coming generations.”

It would seem that rather than cracking jokes and calling those asking for answers, “deniers”, Congressman Markey is himself in denial.  As one of our elected representatives and chairman of the global warming committee, he should be the very person calling for an investigation into the possibility of wrong doing at the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University.

The leaked emails and files have raised a lot of questions, but only for those truely seeking the truth.

A review of code files and emails, show what appears to be temperature data being changed to show an increase in temperatures that the data does not show.  The programmer that did the work used the term “Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL
correction for decline!!” when describing a ‘fudge factor’ he applied to show an increase in temperature readings, because the raw data did NOT show an increase.

If manipulation of data (that the EPA used to justify its rulings to regulate CO2 output) wasn’t enough, the emails also show that Michael Mann (Penn State), Phil Jones, the head of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, and others worked to keep any researched that didn’t support their position out of peer reviewed journals.

Writing this I am becoming more convinced we should do something – even if this is just to state once and for all what we mean by the LIA and MWP. I think the skeptics will use this paper to their own ends and it will set paleo back a number of years if it goes unchallenged.

I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it
until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor. A CRU person is on the editorial board, but
papers get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch.

Cheers

Phil [Jones]

And Michael Mann’s reply:

In fact, Mike McCracken first pointed out this article to me, and he and I have discussed
this a bit. I’ve cc’d Mike in on this as well, and I’ve included Peck too. I told Mike that
I believed our only choice was to ignore this paper. They’ve already achieved what they
wanted–the claim of a peer-reviewed paper. There is nothing we can do about that now, but
the last thing we want to do is bring attention to this paper, which will be ignored by the
community on the whole…

It is pretty clear that thee skeptics here have staged a bit of a coup, even in the
presence of a number of reasonable folks on the editorial board (Whetton, Goodess, …). My
guess is that Von Storch is actually with them (frankly, he’s an odd individual, and I’m
not sure he isn’t himself somewhat of a skeptic himself), and without Von Storch on their
side, they would have a very forceful personality promoting their new vision.
There have been several papers by Pat Michaels, as well as the Soon & Baliunas paper, that
couldn’t get published in a reputable journal.

This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the
“peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal!
So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a
legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate
research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also
need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently
sit on the editorial board…

What do others think?

mike [Mann]

Congressman Markey and other Democratic Congressmen and Senators keep saying the emails don’t change the fact that it is a scientific fact that the earth is warming and man is the prime cause.  They stick with Gore’s the “debate is over on global warming” line, and refuse to even acknowledge opposing viewpoints and research.

If the Democrats in Congress are really interested in the truth, rather than just furthering their political positions, they should be leading the cries for an independent review of the data that Congress, the IPCC and EPA have relied on.  If the data is innacurate due to intentional manipulation, or incomplete due to suppressing opposing views, then how can Congressmen like Markay KNOW that their conclusions and subsequent legislation are in the best interest of the citizens of this country.

Congressman Markey’s job is not to defend questionable ethics by the VERY scientists that Congress has relied on when writing and passing global warming legislation.

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“My statement all along is it has to slow down the increase of health care costs over time, and that is bending the cost curve, and secondly, that it has to be deficit neutral,” McCaskill said on “Fox News Sunday.

“We have to be saving more money for our government than we’re spending. And if we’re not saving more money for our government than we’re spending, then not only will I not support it, the president said he won’t support it,” she added

Let’s look at a couple of the statements.

First, Senator McCaskill says that President Obama won’t support a health care bill that increases government spending.  However, maybe she missed the fact that the President has signed bills that will increase our deficit by nearly two trillion dollars, even though he stated that he would make congress “pay as they go”.

Second, what remains to be seen is whether Senator McCaskill, Senator Lincoln and some other Democrats on the hot seat will play a game of CYA.  Vote for cloture (which requires 60 votes) and then vote against the actual bill when the dems only need 50.  This is the game that Blanch Lincoln and others are playing.  They think they can hit the campaign trail and say, “I voted against the health care bill.  Some try and claim I voted for it, but it isn’t true.  The vote they refer to was a procedural vote to end debate and call for a vote on a bill.  Check the record, I voted against the health care bill.”

Let’s hope Americans are smarter than McCaskill, Lincoln, President Obama and other Democrats think they are.

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While details are sketchy, what is being reported is that Medicare would now be opened up to people as young as 55, and this could happen as early as 2011.  For many far-left Democrats, this is being considered a victory, because they know this ‘compromise’ is actually better than the option it is replacing.

Democrat Anthony Weiner said this about the Medicare expansion:

Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., called it “an unvarnished, complete victory for people like me who have been arguing for a single-payer system.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is endorsing the Medicare expansion, “There’s certainly a great deal of appeal.”

While liberal Democrats are enthusiastically embracing expanding the the largest US government controlled health care program, the Mayo clinic came out against an expansion of Medicare:

“We have a lot of concern,” said Jeffrey Korsmo, executive director for the health policy center at the Mayo Clinic, which said it lost $840 million treating Medicare patients last year. He said the change would “push the best providers, hospitals and physicians closer to the brink of financial ruin.”

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“Absolutely, we need earmark reform,” Obama said in the first presidential debate. “And when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.”

And while President Obama, with great fanfare, forbade earmarks from his stimulus package, he did not “go line by line” through the $410 billion spending bill that Congress passed this week and that includes roughly 8,500 earmarks costing $7.7 billion. Republicans, convinced that what Americans yearn for in these troubled economic times is a balanced federal budget, have seized upon the bill, insisting that Obama should veto it or be exposed as a rank hypocrite.

Fast forward to December and now Congress has passed a massive $1.1 Trillion Spending Package:

Despite a massive budget deficit, House Democrats pressed ahead Thursday with a huge spending measure combining major spending boosts for domestic agencies and foreign aid with more than 5,000 back-home projects sought by lawmakers.

The 1,088-page, $1.1 trillion measure would provide $447 billion in operating budgets for 10 Cabinet departments, with increases averaging almost 10 percent. There would be more than $600 billion in payments for federal benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

The generosity comes on top of an infusion of cash to domestic agencies in February’s economic stimulus bill and a $410 billion measure in March that also bestowed budget increases well above inflation.

While this Bills still has to pass the Senate before going to the President’s desk, we have decided to go ahead and point out the Whopper, as there is no indication he will go “line by line” through any spending bill, not veto bills loaded with pork.

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