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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government ran up the largest monthly deficit in history in February, keeping the flood of red ink on track to top last year’s record for the full year.

The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the February deficit totaled $220.9 billion, 14 percent higher than the previous record set in February of last year.

The deficit through the first five months of this budget year totals $651.6 billion, 10.5 percent higher than a year ago.

The Obama administration is projecting that the deficit for the 2010 budget year will hit an all-time high of $1.56 trillion, surpassing last year’s $1.4 trillion total. The administration is forecasting that the deficit will remain above $1 trillion in 2011, giving the country three straight years of $1 trillion-plus deficits.

AllahPundit of Hot Air puts this massive deficit in perspective:

All I can do is try to contextualize this for you: According to CBO, based on an analysis of the deeply deceitful numbers presented to it by Reid and Obama, the national panacea of health-care reform will save us $132 billion over the next 10 years. Which means the feds blew through our big decade-long ObamaCare refund in about … 17 days last month. (Savings from 2020 to 2029 are estimated to be $1 trillion, but follow the “deeply deceitful” link for insight into that. Even CBO scoffs at trying to predict any numbers that far out.)

This follows a day after the CBO said that it projected the deficit over the next 10 years to be $1.2 trillion higher than the Obama administration has estimated.  The CBO projects the deficit to be $9.7 trillion vs the $8.5 trillion the White House has estimated for the next decade.  That would put the national debt in 2020 well over $22 trillion, which is a number that many people consider unsustainable.

That $22 trillion national debt doesn’t even take into account the real costs of the health care bill if it is passed.  Through manipulation of the CBO scoring, the gang of three (Obama, Pelosi and Reid) were able to get a CBO score showing a deficit reduction over the next decade of $130 billion or so.  Independent analysis of the health care bill put the real cost at about $1 trillion over the next decade, which would raise the 10 year deficit to close to $11 trillion and the national debt in 2020 to over $23 trillion.

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.

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.

President Obama ran on the promise that he would not raise taxes on any individual making less than $200,000 and any family making less than $250,000.  It was a promise he made repeatedly on the campaign trail and continued to make after being sworn in.

As many conservatives expected would happen, President Obama is laying the groundwork for an across the board tax increase.   The President now says he is ‘agnostic’ on tax increases on the middle class and open to any solutions to get the deficit under control.

President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.

Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that a presidential commission on the budget needs to consider all options for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table,” the president said in the interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “So what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions.”

Obama repeatedly vowed during the 2008 presidential election campaign that he would not raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 and households earning less than $250,000 a year. When senior White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner suggested in August that the administration might be open to going back on that pledge, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs quickly reiterated the president’s promise.

President Obama went on to say that the problem was not the spending increase last year, but simply that there is a ‘mismatch’ between the amount of money coming in and going out, and “that is going to require some big, tough choices that, so far, the political system has been unable to deal with.”

It isn’t very hard to read between those lines.  He’s agnostic on a tax increase on middle class families.  He doesn’t feel the spending Orgy that Reid and Pelosi have conducted and he has encouraged and signed into law, is the problem.  But, because there is a mismatch between the spending and revenue, tough choices must be made.  In other words, taxes will be raised on the middle class to pay for his $4 trillion budget and $1.6 trillion deficit.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air gives his take on Obama’s reversal on a middle class tax increase:

What changed? Obama’s economic policies have had the effect that we predicted they would during the campaign. The White House sees trillion-plus budget deficits for most of the next ten years, thanks to massively expanding federal budgets and the drag they put on economic growth. Either Obama has to drastically reduce federal spending and the intrusion it creates in American lives, or he has to hike taxes in a broad manner to generate enough income to offset the spending. Taxing just the upper 5% isn’t an option.

What Obama is signaling was predicted by conservative strategists and blogs since before candidate Barack Obama was elected.  It was always expected to happen in the order we are seeing it.  First, Obama would ratchet up spending in massive way.  Then, they would use the historic deficits to justify a broad-based tax increase.

It’s unclear in what form the tax increases will come, but they almost certainly will appear in some form or fashion.  It’s possible that we could see a national sales tax or VAT tax.  It could come in the form of increased gas and energy taxes.  However, the most likely scenario is simply an across the board increase in income taxes.

Common sense would say that the Democrats in Congress afraid of losing their majority in the November elections would probably not be willing to vote in a tax increase before the election.  That would mean they would have to pass a tax increase after the elections, but before the new Congress is sworn in.  That might be easier said than done, especially if Reid loses his reelection bid.

Instead, if the Democrats are not able to pass the tax increase they want, they can accomplish it by simply doing nothing and letting the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year.  Then, when the Republicans attempt to extend the Bush tax cuts, the Democrats will simply block any attempts to extend the tax cuts, which they will be able to do whether or not they still control both Houses of Congress next year.

The first President Bush felt the wrath of  American voters when he broke his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge.  Time will tell if President Obama feels that same wrath.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Visit Newsmax for more information about how you can help stop Obmacare:

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Reid is counting on this distraction to not only temper the outrage over his payoffs to buy the 60 votes he needed in the Senate, but also to hide the fact that his bill mandates that insurance companies collect a minimum abortion fee of $1 a month from everyone enrolled in insurance plans to go into a pool to pay for abortions.

Even with the Christmas distraction, the more word gets out about the details of Harry Reid’s health care bill, the more backlash is evident in the polls.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has polls results showing nearly 3/4 of Americans oppose federal funding of abortion:

A new poll by Quinnipiac shows public opinion hardening on ObamaCare as Harry Reid attempts to push it through to its Senate conclusion.  Overall, American voters oppose ObamaCare 53%-36%, but the issue of funding abortion through public funds is even more conclusive.  By a margin of 72%-23%, voters disapprove of using federal funds to provide abortions or abortion coverage.  The controversy hurts Barack Obama’s job-approval numbers, but it’s not the only issue impacting them

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

12:20pm Eastern. Sen. McCain must have had a Red Bull. He’s on the floor now roasting the payoffs and the backroom deals. The Democrats, he says, “will pay consequences. They should. They should.” Says all Republicans will unite against Demcare, go to town halls and senior centers. “We have just begun to fight.”

Check out Malkin’s blog for a run down of tonight’s vote.  America may never be the same again.

Yea, I’ve heard those liberal whoppers as well.

Mary Theroux of The Independent Institute throws some cold water on the lie you’ve been hearing about how private insurance denies coverage, and Medicare is the model program:

According to the American Medical Association’s National Health Insurer Report Card for 2008, the government’s health plan, Medicare, denied medical claims at nearly double the average for private insurers: Medicare denied 6.85% of claims. The highest private insurance denier was Aetna @ 6.8%, followed by Anthem Blue Cross @ 3.44, with an average denial rate of medical claims by private insurers of 3.88%

In its 2009 National Health Insurer Report Card, the AMA reports that Medicare denied only 4% of claims—a big improvement, but outpaced better still by the private insurers. The prior year’s high private denier, Aetna, reduced denials to 1.81%—an astounding 75% improvement—with similar declines by all other private insurers, to average only 2.79%

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)

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!”

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.

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

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.

There has been a steady decline in support for the health care bill, along with support for President Obama, ever since the Town Hall meetings this summer.  Americans also appear to be growing tired of the back room dealing that Obama and Reid have been guilty of using to try and get a bill passed.

Here is Rasmussen reports latest health care poll:

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters nationwide say that it would be better to pass no health care reform bill this year instead of passing the plan currently being considered by Congress. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 34% think that passing that bill would be better.

Middle-income voters are more likely than others to say that passing no legislation is the better option.

One reason for this is that most Americans now believe they will be worse off if reform passes. Fifty-four percent (54%) hold that view while just 25% believe they would be better off.

Senior citizens are more pessimistic than younger voters. Just 16% of seniors think they’ll be better off if the legislation passes while 59% have the opposite view.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.