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.

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.

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.

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?

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

In an attempt to cover her gaff, Pelosi’s office later put out a written statement stating the right is within the oft used catch-all “Regulate Commerce” clause.

CNSNews.com asked Senator Ben Nelso (D-Neb.) “Specifically, where in the Constitution does Congress get its authority to mandate that individuals purchase health insurance?” and his response: “well, you know, I don’t know that I’m a constitutional scholar,” said Nelson. So, I, I’m not going to be able to answer that question.”

This is very reminicsent of President Obama stating that ‘empathy’ would be a key in choosing a Supreme Court Justice, because he felt the “quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes” was as important as interpreting the law and constitution.

If Supreme Court Justices should consider people’s hopes and struggles when interpreting constitutional law, why shouldn’t Speaker Pelosi disregard the Constitution when drafting legislation?  After all, she will have empathetic Justices to focus not on the true constitutionality, but instead whether it makes people ‘feel good’.

“We were not — I repeat — were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used,” said Pelosi, D-Calif.

Yet her inteligence aid Michael Sheehy, reportedly told her in 2003 that waterboarding was used on Abu Zubaydah.  In addition, a CIA document shows Pelosi received a briefing in September of 2002 on the tactics used on Zubaydah.