The recent bump in the unemployment rate to 9.6%, when we were supposed to see economic recovery during the summer of recovery, lends some credence to Morris’ concerns:

Why is unemployment remaining so high? Because the totality of Obama’s policies are dragging us into a depression.

• The prospect of dramatically higher taxes next year is freezing consumer spending, particularly in the upper income ranges which spend a third of America’s consumption.

• The huge changes that are looming in medical care brought about by Obama’s health care legislation are freezing new employment and expansion in the medical sector which accounts for 16% of GDP.

• The financial reform legislation has so raised the prospect of a federal takeover of any bank that makes “imprudent” loans that financial institutions are afraid to lend, freezing new job creation.

• The looming possibility of cap-and-tax legislation in the name of halting climate change is freezing any expansion in the manufacturing and energy sectors since these policies will force jobs to move overseas to locations that do not impose such a tax (e.g. India and China).

• The massive expansion in the deficit and in the resulting debt has so eroded confidence in our nation’s future that Americans are now saving 6% of their income, up from 1% in the past, sapping consumer spending.

• The threat of new rules for union elections that will spread private sector unionization is freezing business expansion plans.

President Obama is so focused on remaking America in the mold of Western Europe, that he appears blinded to the damage that he’s doing.  While his election was clearly a vote against Republicans following unhappiness with some of the Bush policies, President Obama and his administration viewed the election as a mandate for their liberal agenda.   This belief in a far-left mandate has allowed him to ignore the clear will of the people as reflected in polls, Town Hall meetings, and other events and just plow ahead with his far-left, liberal agenda — regardless of the cost to America.

It would appear that small bump is gone and he has began his downward spiral again.

A new Rasmussen Reports poll has recorded the worst Presidential Approval Index yet recorded for President Obama.  The Rasmussen approval index is the difference between those likely voters that strongly approve of the President and those that strongly disapprove.  The new poll shows only 23% of voters strongly approve of the President, while 45% strongly disapprove (that’s more than the combination of those that strongly or somewhat approve of the President, which is only 43%).

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 23% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-five percent (45%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -22. That’s the lowest Approval Index rating yet measured for this president (see trends).

Enthusiasm for the president among Democrats, which bounced following passage of the health care law, has faded again. Just 48% of those in the president’s party now Strongly Approve of Obama’s performance. That’s down from 65% earlier.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air says that as bad as Obama’s overall approval rating is, his approval on key issues has to have the White House worried:

The internals for perceptions of Obama are looking very shaky indeed.  Only 39% approve of his performance on the economy; only 44% approve of his overall leadership.  Just 37% approve of his energy policies.  A microscopic 26% trust Obama in an economic crisis, and only 35% believe his ethics to be good or excellent.

Keep an eye on the numbers after Obama’s presser on Thursday.  He may get a bump just for showing up; if he does, expect him to start hitting the campaign trail ASAP.  If he doesn’t, don’t expect to see Obama much at all.

As bad as these numbers are, they are still bolstered by the largely glowing press coverage that President Obama is receiving from the mainstream TV and print media.   We are just starting to see key liberals in the media, and in some cases Congress, start to question President Obama on issues from his handling of the BP gulf oil spill, to the alleged Joe Sestak bribe, to his refusal to take questions from the press except when it is a one-on-one interview with a friendly reporter.

As the the national debt rises, the border situation escalates and the realities of the bait and switch Obamacare come to light, it’s becoming clear that more and more people have had enough of “hope and change.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The American Spectator reports that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was given the analysis by the Medicare actuary, which showed that Obamacare would have many negative side effects.  Sebelius refused to review, and as a result publicize, the report, claiming she didn’t want to influence the vote.  By not wanting to influence the vote, she meant she didn’t want to do anything to hurt the chances of Obamacare passing, even if that meant burying facts that Congress and the public should have had BEFORE the final votes were taken.

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care “reform” law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

Grace-Marie Turner of National Review Online summarizes the report that Sebelius buried until after the Obamacare vote:

But looking at the details of Foster’s report shows the many, many danger signs for Obamacare and how many of its promises will be broken:

1. People losing coverage: About 14 million people will lose their employer coverage by 2019, as smaller employers terminate their plans and workers who currently have employer coverage enroll in Medicaid. Half of all seniors on Medicare Advantage could lose their coverage and the extra benefits the plans offer.

2. Huge fines for companies: Businesses will pay $87 billion in penalties in the first five years after the fines trigger in 2014, partly because they can’t afford to offer expensive, government-mandated coverage and partly because some of their employees will apply for taxpayer-subsidized insurance.

3. Higher costs for consumers: Tens of billions of dollars in new fees and excise taxes will be “passed through to health consumers in the form of higher drug and devices prices and higher premiums,” according to Foster. A separate report shows small businesses will be hit hardest.

4. A program created to fail: The new “CLASS Act” long-term-care insurance program will face “a significant risk of failure,” according to Foster. Indeed, he finds, “there is a very serious risk that the problem of adverse selection will make the CLASS program unsustainable.”

5. Spending increases: Under the new law, national health spending will increase by $311 billion over the coming decade. And instead of bending the federal spending curve down, it will move it upward “by a net total of $251 billion” over the next decade.

6. “Free-riders”: An estimated 23 million people will remain uninsured in 2019, roughly 5 million of whom would be undocumented aliens; the remainder would be the 18 million who decline to get coverage and who will pay the penalty.

7. Spending reductions are fiction: Estimated reductions in the growth rate of health spending “may not be fully achievable” because “Medicare productivity adjustments could become unsustainable even within the next ten years, and over time the reductions in the scope of employer-sponsored health insurance could also become an issue.”

8. You can’t keep your doctor: Fifteen percent of all hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers treating Medicare patients could be operating at a loss by 2019, which will “possibly jeopardize access to care for beneficiaries.” Doctors are threatening to drop out of Medicare because cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates mean they can’t even cover their costs.

9. Coverage but no care: A significant portion of those newly eligible for Medicaid will have trouble finding physicians who will see them, and the increased demand for Medicaid services could be difficult to meet.

This is an objective report by administration actuaries that shows this sweeping legislation has serious, serious problems.

And there’s more: Joint Economic Committee Republicans explain in a new report the impact of a rarely mentioned $14.3 billion per year tax on health insurance, effective in 2014. They find this tax will be mostly passed through to consumers in the form of higher premiums for private coverage. It will cost the typical family of four with job-based coverage an additional $1,000 a year in higher premiums and will fall largely, and inequitably, on small businesses and their employees.

Whether you are for or against Obamacare and a move towards nationalized health care, it is hard to defend burying a report by the Medicare’s office of the actuary that detailed the negative impacts that passing Obamacare would cause.  Anyone that watched the votes on C-SPAN or simply watched President Obama’s sales pitches leading up to the votes would know that the picture that Democrats painted was far different than what the Medicare actuary and the CBO stated.   Obama and Congressional Demorats painted a picture of reduced costs, increased coverage, deficit reduction and so much more.

There is also a report that the White House Legislative Affairs office received a copy of the report prior to the Congressional vote.  Ed Morrissey of Hot Air discusses this:

If the Obama administration had this information before the vote — and it should be noted that this comes from a single, anonymous source — then it deliberately misled Congress on the cost estimates.  That may not be a crime, but it’s highly unethical at the least, and makes Barack Obama’s claims to operate with transparency absolutely laughable, if true.  As the Prowler’s source points out, the entire reason CMS provided an analysis was to ensure that everyone knew the ramifications of passing this legislation.  Deliberately withholding it would have stripped Congress of that transparency, if that’s indeed what happened.

The CBO, once you dug into the numbers, clearly showed that Obamacare would not reduce the deficit, but instead massively increase it.  The CBO report stated that premiums would rise faster under Obamacare than if no legislation was passed.  The HHS report, once  Sebelius stopped burying it, showed the same, an increase in costs, and millions losing their coverage or being unable to find physicians willing to treat them.

Are the lies and Chicago style politics ‘really’ the change that American’s voted for in November of 2008?

On Thursday Van Irion, a Congressional candidate and Constitutional lawyer, filed a lawsuit against Obamacare following the Tennessee Attorney General’s refusal to do so:

Third District Congressional candidate Van Irion said in just three days, more than 500 individuals and companies from 30 states have joined his federal lawsuit “against Obamacare.”

On Thursday, the attorney filed a constitutional challenge to the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” in Chattanooga Federal Court. He filed suit two days after Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper announced that his office would not be filing suit on behalf of Tennessee citizens

In the days since filing the lawsuit, Irion says that he has had over 600 people request to join the suit:

“We’ve been stunned at the response,” Irion said. “We immediately started getting requests to join the lawsuit from people and companies all across the US. We then decided to represent any US citizens and companies. The count is now 600 and we expect to reach 1000 plaintiffs within a week.”

Once Irion has collected enough names of people and companies wishing to join this lawsuit, he will file a motion to join all of those individuals to his lawsuit and expects that the case will be certified a class action at that point.

Click the following link to get a copy of Irion’s complaint Shreeve v Obama et al or visit Van Irion’s site for more information or to sign up to join the class action suit.

To get an idea of who Irion is, here’s an interview where he talks about his beliefs about the constitution and what he would do if he was elected and sent to Washington:

This characterization has been evident for a while, but since Obamacare passed, it has become clear that attacking the Tea Party is at the center of the Democrats plan for the mid-term elections.

The fact that the Democrats, including the White House and liberal press, are attacking the Tea Party movement this aggressively shows just how much the left fears the Tea Party and the impact its members will have in November.

If the result of the Winston Group poll that The Hill reported today are accurate, Obama’s aggressive attack strategy may backfire come November:

The national breakdown of the Tea Party composition is 57 percent Republican, 28 percent Independent and 13 percent Democratic, according to three national polls by the Winston Group, a Republican-leaning firm that conducted the surveys on behalf of an education advocacy group. Two-thirds of the group call themselves conservative, 26 are moderate and 8 percent say they are liberal.

The Winston Group conducted three national telephone surveys of 1,000 registered voters between December and February. Of those polled, 17 percent – more than 500 people — said they were “part of the Tea Party movement.”

“It’s a good sample size,” said David Winston, the polling firm’s director. “It will certainly give us an initial base to follow where these folks are.”

In addition. the poll found:

• 61% believe infrastructure spending creates jobs
• 63% believe reducing unemployment is more important than fixing the deficit
• 71% view the GOP favorably
• 75% view the Democratic party unfavorable
• 95% believe that “Democrats are taxing, spending, and borrowing too much”
• 80% disapprove of the job President Obama is doing
• 82% disapprove of Obamacare

In addition to the Winston Group poll, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air details the demographics of the Tea Party that a Gallup poll found:

Is the Tea Party as racist as the media and leading Democrats have portrayed?  Gallup’s demos of the Tea Party look very close to that of the overall American demos on ethnicity.  Whites make up 79% of the Tea Party and 75% of the population; blacks, 6% of the Tea Party and 11% of the population; and “other” in the Tea Party exactly matches the general population at 15%.

Numbers like that from a group where 40% are Democrats and Independents, and that is being continuously attacked by the White House, Congressional Democrats and the main stream media, appears to be another indication of how bloody November may be for the Democrats.

The Scott Brown victory in January was due to Independents and moderate Democrats voting against the Democratic candidate in large part to send a message to the Democrats in Washington.  While it was a local election, it became a national campaign.  As the Democrats clearly did not get the message from the Brown election in Massachusetts, don’t be surprised if a great number of Independents and moderate Democrats opt to resend that message in November.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I am not able to list all the states that joined the Florida suit or provide a link to the AP report.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s important to note several things.

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

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

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

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

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

Ace of Ace of Spades explains this last ditch effort:

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

Here’s the argument:

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

BACKGROUND

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

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET ACT: “LIMITATION ON CHANGES TO THE SOCIAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EXECUTIVE ORDER

- – - – - – -

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

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

Section 1. Policy.

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

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

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

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

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

Section 3. Community Health Center Program.

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

Section 4. General Provisions.

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

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

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

First, it’s important to note that while this is a slim sliver of hope, Foxnews and many other agencies believe that Pelosi has 216, if not more.  They believe that Pelosi continues to try and win yes votes only to pad the numbers so that no Democrats can be pointed to as the ‘deciding vote’ during the upcoming mid-term elections.

That said, less than an hour ago, The Hill reported that Pelosi is still short of 216 and that Stupak’s office is still calling him a firm no:

If every member votes, Democratic leaders can only afford 37 defections. According to The Hill’s whip list, there are 39 Democrats planning to vote no.

Furthermore, The Hill also has seven Democrats in the undecided/unclear column: Reps Jim Cooper (Tenn.), Kathy Dahlkemper (Pa.), Paul Kanjorski (Pa.), Alan Mollohan (W.Va.), Mike Quigley (Ill.), Bobby Rush (Ill.) and Loretta Sanchez (Calif.).

There have been various reports on Sunday that Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and other anti-abortion lawmakers have agreed to an abortion deal involving an executive order from the Obama administration. However, Stupak’s office are strongly denying those reports.

AllahPundit of Hot Air says that Stupak may decide the fate of Obamacare:

I thought for sure that Lincoln Davis and John Tanner voting no meant that Pelosi had made it and was now releasing vulnerable Dems, but it ain’t so.

If the Stupak bloc is still back in the driver’s seat, the question remains:  will Stupak stand by his word or will he simply look for some political cover to help him in November?

The Executive Order will do nothing to stop the mandate that every man and women buying exchange-qualified insurance plans will have to pay $1+ a month into a trust to pay for abortions.  This is the very language in the Senate bill that Stupak said he could not vote for, but now the rumblings are he will vote for it as long as Obama gives him a meaningless Executive Order for him to wave in the air in November and say, “see, I got something from Obama, re-elect me.”

UPDATE:

Ok, this doesn’t look promising.  AllahPundit is reporting that Stupak has scheduled a press conference for 4:00 PM EDT, which almost certainly means he is announcing his yes vote.

UPDATE 2:

While we need to wait about another five minutes for the Stupak Press conference, the Hill is reporting that a deal has been reached with the White House and the remaining members of the Stupak bloc will flip to yes:

“Eight or nine” Democrats, including Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), will announce the deal at a 4 p.m. press conference, according to an anti-abortion Democrat.

“We’ve changed [our votes],” said Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio).

Driehaus said he’s seen the executive order and can now vote for the healthcare bill.  He said Stupak has signed off, as well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Richard Doerflinger
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

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

Update:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just a quick update: despite what you may be hearing from Fox, which has strangely had a more optimistic count for Democrats than even liberal websites, Pelosi DOES NOT have the votes yet.

…

Update #1 (5:48 PM EST): Zack Space just came out as a “no.” The Firedoglake count has him at undecided, so by their count, we just hit 216 no votes for the very first time. Will it stick? Who knows, but getting over the threshold is important.

The liberal site Firedoglake has the current count at 205 no, 204 yes, with 12 undecided and 10 they believe are holding firm with Stupak.  If their numbers are right, and they got all the undecided votes, then Pelosi would either have to cave and offer a deal to the pro-life Stupak group and come up with some language to address the Senate bill’s public funding of abortion.

Since it is a near certainty that the Senate would not act on any resolution or bill to ‘fix’ the Senate health carebill and remove the public funding for abortion, that really only leaves two choices.  First, Stupak and his group vote no.  Second, they go back on their word and vote for a bill with public funding for abortion.  It’s possible that Pelosi will help them by giving them some political cover by including some language to remove the public funding for abortion, even when she knows the Senate will never act on it.

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air reports on a possible executive order on abortion aimed to win Stupak 10:

NRO says this “still isn’t nailed down,” but it sounds like the final stumbling block may be some sort of executive order about abortion to bring the Stupakers on board. And the pro-choicers are apparently okay with it. Gulp.

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

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

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

From a top level source in the House comes the news that the Democrats are still short of the 216 votes they need to pass Obamacare. They have decided, however, to go for broke on Sunday and attempt to pass it whether or not they have enough support. They feel that only by forcing a vote can the force members off the fence. They hope that by employing all means at their disposal, they can round up enough votes for passage. But, if they don’t have the votes, they will allow the measure to be defeated. One source called it a “suicide run.”

The League of American Voters is strengthening its efforts.

GO HERE NOW to donate.

The Chamber of Commerce is now running new ads linking health care to the deficit and America’s possible loss of an AAA rating on its bonds.

Keep on phoning and keep on working!!!!!

Help The League Of American Voters Stop Obamacare And Prepare For Upcoming Battles — Go Here Now

As Morris says, the most important thing you can do is donate to help run ads exposing this deficit buster for what it is, and for those that oppose the bill to dial the phone and call those undecided and swing votes.

When President Bush left office, 43% of people strongly disapproved of his job performance.  This was after years of fighting two unpopular wars, and a presidential campaign that saw Obama, Clinton and other Democrats sole strategy being to demonize President Bush and claim any Republican elected would simply be four more years of George Bush.

It is amazing, that after the years of war, near collapse of the economic system, and two plus years of Democratic Presidential candidates demonizing Bush, that Obama has equaled his strongly disapprove numbers in just a little over a year.

Today, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air reports on today’s Rasmussen Reports poll:

Today’s Rasmussen numbers from their daily presidential poll puts Barack Obama into an unusual position.  In just 14 months, he has made himself more unpopular than his predecessor, at least by the measure of strong disapproval.  Obama’s approval index has tied its lowest mark yet at -21:

Rasmussen describes the new low for President Obama:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 23% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21. That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President (see trends).

And from the “do they really not get it” category, Rasmussen explains what we have seen repeatedly over the last year, which is the more Obama pushes Obamacare on the American public, the lower his approval rating goes:

Each time the President leads a big push for his health care plan, his job approval ratings suffer. For Members of Congress, the impact may be more tangible. Just 34% say they’re more likely to vote for someone who supports this legislation. Fifty-percent (50%) are less likely to vote for a Member of Congress who supports the health care reform plan proposed by the President and Congressional Democrats. …

Overall, 45% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. Fifty-five percent (55%) disapprove.

It is simply amazing that a President that had an approval ratings in the high 60′s or 70′s (depending on the poll) when he took office, now only has a 45% approval rating.  Even more stunning is he is approaching the point where half of America ‘strongly’ disapprove of the job he is doing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He promised that no families making less than $250,000 would receive a tax increase.  I suppose technically, forcing them to pay more for insurance coverage isn’t raising their taxes, but that doesn’t mean that it will be any easier on middle class families.

While Obamacare will add a 3.9% Medicare tax to investment income for the first time on families making over $250,000, the hardest hit families will likely be those having combined incomes around $100,000.

These folks will be too “rich” to qualify for ObamaCare’s subsidies, but probably too poor to easily afford the pricey insurance that the president’s plan forces them to buy.

Many of these $100K families will be obliged to buy a policy costing an average of $14,700 for the mid-level, “silver” health plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates. After income taxes, they’ll be spending almost a quarter of their net income for health insurance.

During the health care summit, President Obama stated as fact, a completely inaccurate statement.  He claimed that if Obamacare passed, insurance premiums would go down.  However, at that time, the CBO had already stated that while there would be a very minor decrease in premiums for large corporate plans, there would be a 10-13% increase in premiums for individuals purchasing insurance on their own.

The budget office concluded that premiums for people buying their own coverage would go up by an average of 10 percent to 13 percent, compared with the levels they’d reach without the legislation.

As always, it is very difficult to know whether the President simply doesn’t know what is contained in the health care bills he is forcing on the American public, or if he is being intentionally deceitful.

In his interview with Bret Baier, the President stated that all ‘special deals’ were being removed from the Senate bill, except those provisions that would apply to all states.  He used the Louisiana provision as an example of one that has been incorrectly characterized as a special deal for Louisiana, when in fact it applies to all states.

Unless the Louisiana purchase has been rewritten in the reconciliation bill, then either President Obama intentionally lied or clearly doesn’t know what is in the Senate bill, which coincidentally House Democrats are terrified of voting on.

In his interview with Bret Baier, the President stated:

Something that was called a special deal was for Louisiana. It was said that there were billions — millions of dollars going to Louisiana, this was a special deal. Well, in fact, that provision, which I think should remain in, said that if a state has been affected by a natural catastrophe, that has created a special health care emergency in that state, they should get help. Louisiana, obviously, went through Katrina, and they’re still trying to deal with the enormous challenges that were faced because of that.

That also — I’m giving you an example of one that I consider important. It also affects Hawaii, which went through an earthquake. So that’s not just a Louisiana provision. That is a provision that affects every state that is going through a natural catastrophe.

Now I have said that there are certain provisions, like this Nebraska one, that don’t make sense. And they needed to be out. And we have removed those. So, at the end of the day, what people are going to be able to say is that this legislation is going to be providing help to small businesses and individuals, across the board, in an even handed way, and providing people relief from a status quo that’s just not working.

Now lets look at the Language of the Senate Bill:

8 ‘‘(2) In this subsection, the term ‘disaster-recovery

9 FMAP adjustment State’ means a State that is one of

10 the 50 States or the District of Columbia, for which, at

11 any time during the preceding 7 fiscal years, the President

12 has declared a major disaster under section 401 of the

13 Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assist

14 ance Act and determined as a result of such disaster that

15 every county or parish in the State warrant individual and

16 public assistance or public assistance from the Federal

17 Government under such Act and for which—

There is only one state, that in the preceding seven fiscal years, would qualify under the senate language.  Hawaii and their mythical earthquake would of course not qualify.

So, unless the reconciliation bill removes the “preceding seven fiscal years” and changes this to an ongoing relief for states where disasters are declared in every county following a natural disaster, it can and does only apply to Louisiana.

That then leaves us with two options.  Either the President intentionally lied to Bret Baier and the American public or contrary to his claims, he doesn’t know what the Senate language contains.

I think Cassy Fiano of Hot Air sums it up well:

This moment, from Bret Baier’s interview on Fox News with Obama, might just be one of the biggest “WTF?!” moments from Obama’s presidency yet. Obama is either completely making things up, living in an alternate reality, or really, really confused.

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

Two of the most blatant examples of this are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air:

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

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

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

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

Visit Hot Air to see the entire report.

A survey by the New England Journal of Medicine cites fears of increased patient loads and decreased pay, along with already having large debt loads, as reasons why they would not recommend the medical profession to others and would consider leaving if Obamacare passes.   Nearly 50% of primary care physicians are considering leaving or feel they will be forced out of their medical practices if Obamacare is passed.

CNS News reports on the New England Journal of Medicine Survey:

More than 29 percent (29.2) percent of the nearly 1,200 doctors who responded to the survey said they would quit the profession or retire early if health reform legislation becomes law. If a public option were included in the legislation, as several liberal Senators have indicated they would like, the number would jump to 45.7 percent.

The medical journal published the results in its March and April edition, saying: “While a sudden loss of half of the nations physicians seems unlikely, a very dramatic decrease in the physician workforce could become a reality as an unexpected side effect of health reform.”

Kevin Perpetua, managing partner for the Medicus Firm, reported that a reform bill could be “the final straw” in an already financially precarious industry.

“Many physicians feel that they cannot continue to practice if patient loads increase while pay decreases,” Perpetua said in the study. “The overwhelming prediction from physicians is that health reform, if implemented inappropriately, could create a detrimental combination of circumstances, and result in an environment in which it is not possible for most physicians to continue practicing medicine.”

“With an average debt of $140,000, and many graduates approaching a quarter of a million dollars in school loans, being a doctor is becoming less and less feasible,” Perpetua said. “Health-care reform and increasing government control of medicine may be the final straw that causes the physician workforce to break down.”

The survey shows that many doctors already find their situations difficult:

– 36 percent said that they would not recommend medicine as a profession to others, regardless of whether health-care reform passes;
– another 27 percent would still recommend medicine as a career, but not if the current reform proposal passes.

In total, 63 percent of doctors would not recommend the profession after health-care reform passes. Just 12 percent do not recommend becoming a physician now but think they would if current reform proposals pass.

Primary-care physicians, those who work in the critical fields of family and internal medicine, not only feel that they would want to quit but that they might be cast out of medicine. 46.3 percent of those physicians said that they would either want to leave medicine or that they would be “forced out” by the changes to the system.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air comments on the interview:

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

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

Last week, during one of President Obama’s Obamacare pep rallies, he claimed that his bill would save money and reduce the deficit by $1 trillion over the next decade.  Even with the double counting of the cuts to medicare, and without counting the ‘doc fix’ bill, the best CBO score that they were able to get is about $140 trillion deficit reduction over the next decade.  Of course, independent analysis of the bill from organizations like the Wall Street Journal state it will actually add around $1 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.  Yet, the President states that it will reduce the deficit by $1 trillion.

Even in light of the Teleprompter, one might assume that was a ‘mistake’.  Yet, he made the same statement again, a few days alter.  It appears that President Obama has reached the stage where the truth is irrelevant and he believes the means justify the ends, even if it includes lying to the American public.

Yesterday in Ohio, President Obama claimed that his health care reform would reduce health care premiums by 3,000 percent:

Monday in Strongsville, Ohio, President Obama said  that ObamaCare will reduce health insurance premiums by “3,000 percent.” Considering that a 50 percent decrease in premiums would mean that we’d be paying half as much as we now pay for health insurance and that a 100 percent decrease in premiums would mean that we’d be paying nothing for health insurance, President Obama is telling us that insurance companies will actually start paying us money to keep our health insurance.

President Obama has tried to create a wave of anger towards insurance companies in order to get support for Obamacare.  He routinely tells the American public that insurance companies are to blame for the high cost of health care.  Yet, as is often the case with this White House, the truth is far different than the rhetoric:

Whatever their sins, insurers are mainly intermediaries; they pass along the costs of the delivery system. In 2009, the largest 14 insurers had profits of roughly $9 billion; that approached 0.4 percent of total health spending of $2.472 trillion. This hardly explains high health costs. What people need to know is that Obama’s plan evades health care’s major problems and would worsen the budget outlook. It’s a big new spending program when government hasn’t paid for the spending programs it already has.

Mr. President, the campaign is over.  It’s time to stop making campaignesque lies, and start shooting straight with the American public.

The following comes from the National Review via Sister Toldjah:

Sitting in an airport, on his way home to Michigan, Rep. Bart Stupak, a pro-life Democrat, is chagrined. “They’re ignoring me,” he says, in a phone interview with National Review Online. “That’s their strategy now. The House Democratic leaders think they have the votes to pass the Senate’s health-care bill without us. At this point, there is no doubt that they’ve been able to peel off one or two of my twelve. And even if they don’t have the votes, it’s been made clear to us that they won’t insert our language on the abortion issue.”

According to Stupak, that group of twelve pro-life House Democrats — the “Stupak dozen” — has privately agreed for months to vote ‘no’ on the Senate’s health-care bill if federal funding for abortion is included in the final legislative language. Now, in the debate’s final hours, Stupak says the other eleven are coming under “enormous” political pressure from both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). “I am a definite ‘no’ vote,” he says. “I didn’t cave. The others are having both of their arms twisted, and we’re all getting pounded by our traditional Democratic supporters, like unions.”

[...]

Stupak notes that his negotiations with House Democratic leaders in recent days have been revealing. “I really believe that the Democratic leadership is simply unwilling to change its stance,” he says. “Their position says that women, especially those without means available, should have their abortions covered.” The arguments they have made to him in recent deliberations, he adds, “are a pretty sad commentary on the state of the Democratic party.”

What are Democratic leaders saying? “If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”

If Obamacare passes, Stupak says, it could signal the end of any meaningful role for pro-life Democrats within their own party. “It would be very, very hard for someone who is a right-to-life Democrat to run for office,” he says. “I won’t leave the party. I’m more comfortable here and still believe in a role within it for the right-to-life cause, but this bill will make being a pro-life Democrat much more difficult. They don’t even want to debate this issue. We’ll probably have to wait until the Republicans take back the majority to fix this.”

[...]

And the politics of the issue are pretty rough. “This has really reached an unhealthy stage,” Stupak says. “People are threatening ethics complaints on me. On the left, they’re really stepping it up. Every day, from Rachel Maddow to the Daily Kos, it keeps coming. Does it bother me? Sure. Does it change my position? No.”

ALLAHPUNDIT of Hot Air is skeptical about Stupak’s claim about Dems wanting to abort babies to save money:

Let’s think about this. Imagine you’re a pro-choice Democrat. You know Stupak is passionately opposed to funding abortion. You know he’s willing to chat with any conservative media outlet that’ll have him. You also know that Pelosi’s coalition is extremely fragile. Knowing all that, why would you hand him a political grenade this explosive? You’re not going to flip him; you know he’s going to run to NRO or Fox News to tell them what you said; and you know that it’s going to electrify opposition to the bill.

Not only did Stupak describe the Democrat’s reprehensible reasoning for encouraging abortion and wanting public funding for it, but he also described more examples of the Chicago-style politics that Obama brought to Washington.   When the bribery doesn’t work, they simply threaten members of Congress.

Is this really “change we can believe in”?

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

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

Not satisfied with the seemingly stalled health care reform efforts in Washington, state lawmakers in Richmond, Virginia want to make sure residents of the Old Dominion State aren’t subject to a federal mandate requiring citizens to buy health insurance.  This week the Virginia House of Delegates passed legislation that would make it illegal to do just that.

Many Democrats on Capitol Hill want a reform plan that would force citizens to buy health care or face severe penalties. Republicans in their near total rejection of the Democratic reforms have objected. The election of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) and the apparent retreat of the White House and Congressional leaders on health care reform would appear to make a mandate unlikely. But Virginia lawmakers pushed ahead nonetheless.  It isn’t clear what actual impact the Virginia legislation (which according to the Richmond Times Dispatch is expected to be signed into law by Governor Bob McDonnell-R)  would have if federal lawmakers are able to pass a law with the mandate.  If the federal law preempted state prerogatives, lawsuits would certainly follow.

This bill was passed by a Democratically controlled legislature in Virginia.  It is sure to be the first of many such state laws passed.  A number of other state legislatures are currently working on similar bills, which if Obamacare is passed, will almost certainly result in the Supreme Court getting involved and deciding the question:

Can the federal government force an individual to buy something, whether that something is health insurance or a GM car?

The invitations have gone out to leadership in both parties to attend Barack Obama’s ostensibly bipartisan summit on health care.  Is this the event of the social season, a political debate, or Kabuki theater?  Depending on who answers, it seems that no one is quite sure what to expect from any of the participants, assuming the debate takes place at all.

Many Republicans fear that this summit will be nothing more than political theater aimed at helping provide cover for the President and Democrats in Congress as they continue to work behind closed doors to come up with a plan to pass Obamacare via budget reconciliation.

The format that the White House has laid out has done little to alleviate Republican fears.  After opening remarks by President Obama, followed by a Republican and a Democrat, President Obama will moderate a discussion among the 37 law makers invited to the meeting.  Considering what the President has invested in the Democratic bill, along with the deals he has cut with union leaders, Pharma and the insurance industry, many don’t feel he can be an impartial moderator.

Making matters worse is the fact that the White House and Congressional Democrats have not been able to keep quiet the fact they continue to work on a compromise bill between House and Senate Democrats, along with trying to win the support of 51 Senators, which is needed to ram Obamacare through via reconciliation.

In fact, on the same day that President Obama sent out his summit invitations, a Democratic member of the Senate said the decision has been made to proceed with reconciliation:

“I think a decision has just been made — we’re just going to go ahead” with a reconciliation bill, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, told reporters on Friday.

All indications are that the Democrat’s strategy is to have their compromise bill, along with a reconciliation plan, ready to go prior to the Health-Care Summit on February 25th.

Then on the 25th, President Obama will hold his summit, which will have been carefully orchestrated to showcase the revised health care bill that the White House, Congressional Democrats and special interest groups have been working on behind closed doors for nearly two months.   Once the summit is over, they will be able to say, “we had the meeting, we tried to get Republican support, but they still want to do nothing but obstruct health care reform.  We have no choice but to pass health care reform by using reconciliation.”

This is all political theater, because if the White House and Democratic leaders were truly interested in coming up with a bipartisan solution, they wouldn’t be continuing to work on their partisan bill behind closed doors, and they wouldn’t have already made the decision to proceed with reconciliation.

Scott Brown ran in Massachusetts by saying, “I will be the 41st vote to stop the Senate health care bill.”  That promise resulted in nearly two thirds of the independents in the bluest of blue states voting for a Republican.  Add to that, poll after poll shows that the American public is not happy with the Democrat’s health care bills.

There can be no doubt left that the majority of Americans don’t want the Democrat’s health care bill, which they continue to work on in the back rooms of the White House and Congress.

Democrats are betting on the fact that voters have very short memories, as the mid-term elections are less than nine months away.

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.

Here’s what he said:

Here’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country.   The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.   People are angry, and they’re frustrated.  Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.

Axelrod says the Massachusetts win isn’t about health care, but is about the bad economy that Obama inherited:

So I wouldn’t make — I mean, there are messages here. We hear those messages, but there is a tendency in this town — not that you guys would do it — but to overblow things, even beyond their importance. And I don’t think it’s about that one particular issue. I think there’s a general sense of discontent about the economy and there’s a general sense of discontent about this town. That’s why we were elected. We are committed to doing something about it.

These quotes from Axelrod and Obama today, are consistent with the White House message of the last few days, which is that if Brown was to win in Massachusetts, it would not be an indication of Americans being unhappy with President Obama or Health Care, but instead that they are angry about the eight years of Bush and Cheney, but that Coakley didn’t do a good enough job of explaining that fact to the voters.

With logic like that, is it any wonder that President Obama couldn’t get a health care bill passed in a year when holding a huge majority in the House and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate?

In his press briefing yesterday, Robert Gibbs used the words ‘anger’ or ‘angry’ 15 times when referring to the American people.  Gibbs, like Obama and Axelrod, was trying to make the case that Brown only won because Americans are angry, not over what has happened in the last year, but what happened in the eight years prior to Obama getting elected.

Another theme that President Obama stated in his ABC interview, and was a Democratic talking point for days leading up to the election, was that the only failure of the White House and Democrats in Congress in regard to the health care bill has been a failure to fully explain it in a way the American public could understand.  They are trying to make the case that they were so focused on trying to pass the health care bill that they failed to properly explain it to America and if they had, then the American public would be fully supporting the bill.

It’s hard to imagine that Obama or the Democrats in Congress really believe that the Brown loss is a backlash from anger at George Bush.  It’s hard to imagine that they believe that the discontent with Obamacare is because the Democrats haven’t explained it well enough, rather than people being angry about the partisan approach and specials deals that are being cut behind closed doors.

Even though Obama has been on prime time TV so often that ABC has considered giving him a permanent time slot after Ugly Betty, he says that he underestimated the American public realize how good a job he was doing and just assumed we would ‘get it’:

“That I do think is a mistake of mine,” Obama said. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air responds to President Obama’s assertion:

Ask yourselves this: was Obama’s big problem in 2009 getting too involved in legislative efforts and not spending enough time in front of the cameras talking about himself?  On his signature domestic-agenda issue, Democrats in Congress repeatedly complained that Obama wasn’t involved at all.

Just for the record: according to Mark Knoller at CBS, in 2009 Obama gave 42 news conferences (most of them joint “availabilities” with foreign leaders), 52 addresses or statements specifically about health care, with a total of 411 speeches, comments, or remarks.  In addition, Obama did 158 interviews in his first year in office.  He also held 23 town hall meetings, including two out of the country.  It’s not for lack of opportunity that Obama didn’t get to explain himself.

It’s hard to imagine that President Obama really doesn’t get it.  The more likely scenario is that he simply falls back to what he said in regard to passing the pork filled stimulus bill, “I won”, which he believes is all that matters.

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.

In the first six months of President Obama’s first term, the SEIU president, Andy Stern and Richard Trumpka of the AFL-CIO visited the White House at least 30 times.  In fact, Andy Stern of SEIU visited the White House in the first six months more than any other visitor based on the visitor logs the administration released.

Earlier in the week the administration declared they were close to reaching a ‘compromise’ with union leaders that would allow the health care bill to pass.  Clearly, if President Obama had to negotiate with unions in order to pass Obamacare (something he hasn’t even done with Republicans in Congress), it must mean that unions are now the third House of Congress with equal standing to the House and Senate.

ABC is reporting that after a week of non-stop negotiations with unions, the White House and union leaders have reached a deal that will allow Obamacare to move forward to passage:

The White House, congressional Democrats, and labor leaders announced an agreement on a key sticking point in health care reform negotiations: how to handle a new excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” insurance plans.

“The president is pleased with this agreement,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said in a conference call with reporters.

…

The new deal raises the threshold for plans considered “Cadillac” plans to $24,000 for families and $8,900 for individuals.

Significantly, it exempts insurance plans that were part of state and local collective bargaining agreements – union members – until January 1, 2018. They call this a “transition period” in which unions and re-adjust the way they’ve negotiated wages and health insurance in agreements with employers.

In addition, there will be three exemptions allowing adjustments in the threshold:

• one for “unexpected” rises in health care costs beyond what is predicted between 2010 and 2013;
• for various age and gender issues;
• for high risk retirees and those in high-cost states.

In addition, insurance coverage for vision and dental are not taxable.

These changes to the Cadillac tax would end up shaving $60 billion off the $150 billion in revenue expected to be generated under the original proposal, meaning it would raise $90 billion.

Just to make sure this is clear.  While the White House refuses to negotiate with Republican leaders over health care compromises, President Obama has spent the last week meeting behind closed doors (not on C-SPAN) with union leaders to reach a ‘compromise’ so that the health care bill can be passed.  Again, President Obama spent a week working on a compromise with union leaders so that a bill that will impact 1/6 of the nations economy can be passed.

The deal give unions an 8 year pass on tax increases that the rest of America will have to pay on high priced insurance plans, along with creating other exemptions so that they can write ‘clever’ collective bargaining agreements in the future to insure union members never have to pay the taxes that other Americans will have to pay.

Is there any wonder that President Obama refuses to honor his promise of televising health care negotiations on C-SPAN?

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?

The president then turned to the accomplishments of the Democratic Congress, heaping praise on Democrats for their response to the financial crisis and recession, and the passage of a job-creation bill.  Mr. Obama then focused on health care, taking aim at Republican criticisms.

“I know everybody in the media is all in a tizzy [saying], ‘Oh, what is this [health care legislation] going to mean politically?’  Well, let me tell you something,” said President obama. “If Republicans want to campaign against what we have done by standing up for the status quo and for insurance companies over American families and businesses, that is a fight I want to have.  If their best idea is to return to the bad policies and the bad ideas of yesterday, they are going to lose that argument.”

After a lengthy meeting at the White House the previous day, House and Senate Democratic leaders signaled they had made significant progress toward resolving key issues on health care.

I know it was a long week at the White House, with non-stop negotiations with unions in an attempt to reach a health care bill compromise (yes, in the Obama administration unions make up the third House of Congress), followed by partisan meetings with Democrats to sell whatever deals were cut with the unions earlier in the week, so it is understandable that President Obama has forgotten that he is the one that has cut deals with big Pharma and the insurance industry as part of his Obamacare debacle.  The back room deals he cut, but didn’t show on C-SPAN, despite promising to do so eight times on the campaign trail.

Hot Air gives some thoughts on how Obama’s obsession could lead to a landslide for the GOP in November:

A vignette from today’s Democratic policy meeting, in which a guy whose obsession with universal health care has so destroyed his party that a Republican’s on the brink of taking Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat decides to double down for the midterms. Fun facts: Support for ObamaCare is down to 34/54 in today’s Quinnipiac poll and Republican “insiders” tell Hotline on average that they expect the GOP will gain 33 seats next year.

Be sure to head over to Hot Air and watch the video of Obama going after the GOP on Obamacare.

Foxnews has more on the President’s Congressional trip:

Striving to reach a deal on health care, President Barack Obama planned a trip to Congress on Thursday to urge rank-and-file House Democrats to yield on key issues still standing in the way of a historic legislative achievement.

Obama’s late afternoon visit comes amid intense White House negotiations with Democratic leaders aimed at settling core differences between bills passed by the House of Representatives and Senate that must be resolved before the sweeping overhaul legislation can pass.

Reforming health care is Obama’s top domestic priority.

After having key Democrats and unions negotiating at the White House this week, President Obama now will go to Capital Hill to try and heal the divide forming between House and Senate members over differences in their health care bills.

However, he continues to fail to honor his campaign pledges.  He promised at least eight times to televise health care negotiations on C-SPAN to prevent back door deals, which he has failed to do, instead opting for closed door meetings on Capital Hill and at the White House, where deals with unions have been cut and buy offs of Senators have taken place.

Candidate Barack Obama also promised to reach across the aisle and work with Republicans on key legislation, but days after taking office he declared “I won” when locking the Republicans out of the stimulus bill negotiations.  “I won” now appears to be President Obama’s mantra as he continues to lock Republicans out of health care negotiations, while he chooses to work to cut a deal with Democrats, unions and health industry lobbyists to pass Obamacare.

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.

A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows nearly 50% of Americans strongly oppose Obamacare:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 17% believe passage of the legislation will achieve the stated goal of reducing health care costs. Fifty-seven percent (57%) think it will lead to higher costs.

Fifty-two percent (52%) also believe passage of the legislation will lead to a decline in the quality of care.

Overall, 40% of voters nationwide favor the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. Fifty-five percent (55%) are opposed. As has been the case throughout the debate, those who feel strongly about the issue are more likely to be opposed. Just 19% of voters Strongly Favor the plan while 45% are Strongly Opposed.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has this analysis of the new poll results:

The internals on the poll are interestingly contradictory.  For instance, the youngest voters favor passage 58/34, but then they also believe that passage will make health-care quality worse, 38/28, with 21% believing it will stay the same.  That’s actually the best showing among age demographics for believing ObamaCare will make health care better.  Majorities believe it will make it worse starting from age 40 up, and 49% of thirtysomethings believe the same (against 11% who think it will improve health care).  Given that the youngest voters have poor turnout records, this is not a good sign for ObamaCare supporters in Congress this year.

These numbers reinforce why the Democrats have written the bill behind closed doors and attempted to pass it before the American public could read or give feedback to their representatives.  As has been the case all along, the more Americans learn about Obamacare, the less they like it.

The number one long term goal of President Obama and Democrats in Congress is to have a single payer system.   Most Democrats realize they have to do this in steps in order for the US citizens to accept it.  Some say like the old folk warning that if you put a frog in boiling water it will jump out, but if you put it in cold water and gradually raise the temperature, it will boil to death without ever realizing what was happening.  However, while most Democrats realize they have to take the ‘slow boil’ approach, others have said the only real reform is to immediately move to a single payer system, and simply expand Medicare to cover all US citizens.  Last month, prior to Harry Reid’s now famous payoffs to key Senators to pass his health care bill, a compromise that was discussed was expanding Medicare to all people 55 and older, which much to Reid’s chagrin, several Democrats in congress honestly admitted was a great triumph for those pushing for a single payer system.

In December, when Harry Reid was attempting to expand Medicare, the Mayo Clinic warned that an expansion of Medicare could force out of business many hospitals and doctors already struggling to stay afloat.   A spokesperson for Mayo said that last year the Mayo Clinic lost $840 million dollars treating Medicare patients.

On Thursday, the Mayo clinic announced that it would no longer treat Medicare patients in its Glendale Arizona hospital, and associated clinics.  They said that the Glendale hospital had lost $120 million last year treating Medicare patients.

Bloomberg (via BigGovernment) reported on further fallout that might be coming:

Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.

“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.”

While I think their are many “amateur moments” that could have won the Obamateurism of the year award, I have no qualms with their choice of his public response to the Fort Hood shooting.  Like with the failed attempt to blow up the Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas day, when he made his initial public comments about the Fort Hood shooting, he appeared both disinterested and as if he was trying to down play the terrorist action.

President Obama gave a speech that could have be translated as “oh, by the way there was a little incident at Fort Hood today.  We are still getting details, but a decorated Major in the Army, who happens to be a devout Muslim and I applaud him for that, allegedly, and I want to emphasize allegedly, shot and I might add again, allegedly, killed 13 soldiers on the base.  While the details we have are still fuzzy, what we do know is that the civilian police officer who shot and paralyzed Major Hassan acted stupidly.  I had hoped after my teachable moment when I stated on national TV that Detective Crowley and the Cambridge police department acted stupidly for doing their jobs, that white police officers would be much slower to take action against minorities committing crimes.  While I’m sure she meant well, I think Sergeant Munley should be ashamed of herself for paralyzing a true Muslim hero, in Major Nadal.”

Ok, clearly I took some editorial liberties with my translation, but the point is that with President Obama, his friends and terrorists are innocent until proven guilty, EVEN when they have confessed to breaking the law, but the American men and women protecting this country as soldiers or police officers are presumed guilty, until proven innocent.

What’s wrong with this picture?

I guess that’s why Hot Air has plenty of material for their Obamateurism of the day.

On to the quote of the year. Hot Air nominated these quotes for their quote of the year:

• “You lie!”
• “Let me be clear”
• “I hope he fails”
• “The system worked”
• “Hide the decline”
• “B+”
• “I won”

While I believe that Representative Joe Wilson’s “You Lie” outburst during the state of the union will win, it is not what I would vote for in that poll.  While I think Wilson was wrong for how he called the President out, I believe he was accurate in his assessment.  Unfortunately, this President does lie to get what he wants.  Whether it is the fear mongering he does with his misstatements about doctors amputating feet for a quick $50 thousand dollars, or that parents should be afraid that their child’s pediatrician will cut out their kids tonsils for a quick buck, rather than giving them an antibiotic or sending them for an allergy test, he has consistently lied or told half truths in order to try and further his liberal agenda.  In the case of the State of the Union, the lies were in regard to illegals and abortions being covered by Obamacare.

However, while I think that quote was a big story this year, I think the four little letters that spell “I won” are the winners of the quote of the year.  Senator Barack Obama campaigned on changing how Washington works, and touted his long record of reaching across the aisle.  He told us how he would heal the deep divide between the left and the right, and that he would work closely with Republicans in Congress on key legislation.

Well, in the words of Joe Wilson, “you lie” Mr. President.

Just days after he took office, when he and the Democrats were saying we must pass an emergency stimulus bill or the economy would collapse.  The Republicans were completely cut out of the negotiations  that ultimately led to a $700+ billion stimulus package that also incidentally had 5,000+ earmarks.  Joe, let’s hear it again, “you lie,” since the President said he was serious about earmark reform and would go line by line through every bill put on his desk to make sure no bill loaded with earmarks was passed.

Back to the quote of the year.  When House and Senate Republicans went to the White House to voice concerns about the amount of spending and earmarks in the Stimulus bill, Obama’s reply was to simply state matter of factly, “I won.”

Those two small words, four little letters, set the tone for Obama’s first year in office.  He has not been the great uniter he promised.  He has not changed how Washington works (unless you count bringing Chicago style politics and intimidation to the White House as ‘change’).   Instead, the gang of three (Obama, Pelosi and Reid) are running Washington in a completely partisan fashion.  Literally and figuratively locking Republicans out from having any involvement or input on key legislation as the gang of three tick off items on their liberal wish list.

So, I believe that “I won” wins hands down, because while their might have been concerns that President Obama would lead a far left, partisan takeover of Washington, until he said “I won” we didn’t know for sure.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Adler of the Volokh Conspiracy addresses the slippery slope of the commerce clause:

In my view, the biggest problem with the argument for the constitutionality of an individual mandate is that it is an argument without limit.  Basically, the argument is that if Congress can regulate economic activity X, then it can also mandate that each and every American engage in economic activity X.  If this is true for health care, there is no reason why it is not also true for Christmas trees, savings bonds, or GM cars.  In short, Congress could mandate universal participation in any economic activity and mandate the purchase of any product or service it chooses, so long as it does so as part of a broader regulatory scheme.

While some of the language in the majority opinion and Justice Scalia’s concurrence in Raich implies Congress has such power, this approach would create a commerce power without limit, an outcome which both Lopez and Morrison said was incompatible with the concept of enumerated powers. so to embrace this view, as I argued in this article, is to eviscerate their holdings.  As I believe Lopez and Morrison are more consistent with the text of the Commerce Clause and the principles of enumerated powers, I would prefer that the Supreme Court uphold these decisions and overturn or severely limit Gonzales v. Raich, Wickard v. Filburn, and a few others.

I encourage you to read the rest of Mr. Adler’s article at the Volokh Conspiracy.  For those of us that are not constitutional lawyers, it provides a nice understanding of the basic arguments and issues related to a federal mandate to purchase health insurance.

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.

In the first step in testing the constitutionality of the health care bill, the Republicans have pushed for a vote in the Senate.

This first challenge is related to the requirement that everyone in the country being required to have health insurance or pay a $750 penalty.  Many feel the federal government cannot require individuals to purchase health insurance, and therefore also should not be able to charge them a penalty if they don’t have health insurance.

The Washington Examiner reports:

Sens. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and John Ensign, R-Nev., on Tuesday raised a point of order against the legislation on behalf of a caucus of conservative senators.

Ensign said the bill violates individual freedom of choice by requiring people to purchase health insurance or be subjected to fines and penalties.

“Forcing every American to purchase a product is absolutely inconsistent with our Constitution and the freedoms our Founding Fathers hoped to protect,‚Äù Senator DeMint said. “This is not at all like car insurance, you can choose not to drive but Americans will have no choice whether to buy government-approved insurance.”

There are other aspect of the bill that might result in constitutional challenges.  There are multiple clauses that state that any attempt to repeal or amend certain aspects of the bill will be ‘out of order’.  Senator DeMint has said that this is a change to the rules of the Senate and therefore should require a 2/3 majority of the Senate to pass.  The reasoning is that the clauses as written mean that the only way they can be amended or repealed would be with a 2/3 majority of the Senate.

Also, there is some question as to whether it is constitutional for Nebraska to get a free ride on Medicaid expansion, which in affect will be the other 49 states paying Nebraska’s Medicaid bill.

UPDATE:  I am adding a couple interesting notes from Hot Air on this same subject:

In other words, this is a voluntary mandate — at least for now.  The IRS can fine you for flouting the minimum-coverage mandate, but if you refuse to pay, they can’t do anything about it.  They can’t fine you, prosecute you, or even put a lien against your earnings or property.  They apparently can still send you angry letters, but they’ll have the same impact as deadlines on the Iranian nuclear-weapons program.

Update: Matt Lewis reports that Sens. Lindsey Graham and DeMint have asked the South Carolina Attorney General to investigate Harry Reid’s buyoffs in the ObamaCare bill.  I doubt that much will come of it, but it’s worth watching.

Update II: Apparently I left my irony sliced a little too thin.  There is no such thing as a “voluntary mandate,” of course, which was my point.  If the bill blocks prosecution and fine collection for this mandate, then the mandate doesn’t exist.  And Democrats will absolutely remove this section in a year or two when they can schedule another midnight vote, which will make it a very real mandate then.

Dick Morris

I have stated in a couple of posts that people, especially young people, will simply opt to pay the $750 a year penalty rather than purchase health insurance.

Since the health care bill will remove pre-existing illness exclusions and not allow insurance companies to charge more based on a person’s medical history, why would an otherwise healthy person opt to spend thousands on health insurance when they can just pay a $63 a month fine.  They will know that if they get sick they can simply by an insurance plan and not be penalized for having previously opted out of buying health insurance.

Dick Morris explains the impact that this will create:

All Americans will soon find their insurance premiums rising as a result of the bill. The young, uninsured will not buy policies. Why should they? Why not just pay the $750 fines each year? Why pay between 2% and 10% of their household income before subsidies kick in? It makes no financial sense for anyone making more than $30,000 to pay for coverage. (And most of those under that threshold will be covered by Medicaid, not by private insurance).

There is no reason for the young to buy private insurance. The legislation requires that health insurers take all comers and not raise rates based on pre-existing conditions. So the young can get coverage when they need it, having only paid $750 per year beforehand.

The difference in cost will, of course, be borne by families throughout America who will see their health insurance premiums increase. President Obama and his Democratic rubber stamps may appreciate that they are not raising taxes on the middle class, just raising mandatory health insurance premiums, but the distinction is likely to be lost on swing voters.

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.

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.

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.

Politico has some of the details:

In an interview Thursday with a Nebraska radio station, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said new compromise language on abortion funding is unacceptable.

“As it is right now, without further modifications, it isn’t sufficient,” Nelson told KLIN radio in Lincoln, NE.

This could be a significant blow to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s effort to line up 60 votes in the coming days for the health care bill. Nelson has said he would filibuster the bill unless the abortion language mirrored what was included in the House bill.

Even if abortion is addressed to his satisfaction, “that is not enough” for Nelson commit to voting for the bill, he said.

Last night on Foxnews, when asked if he was going to vote for the bill, he said, “yes,” but didn’t elaborate.  It appears he is still on the fense.

The Omaha World Herald reports:

Calling the federal health care reform proposal “bad news for Nebraska,” Gov. Dave Heineman is urging Sen. Ben Nelson to vote against the bill.

…

The governor said Wednesday that a new analysis by Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services indicates that while state spending on Medicaid, the health care system for the poor, would be less in the first three years after the bill took effect, Nebraska, after six years, would have $45 million in extra expenses.

“America’s health care system needs improvement, but this bill is not the answer,” Heineman said in a letter to Nelson. “You are now the 60th vote, and as Governor of the State that we both represent, I urge you to vote against this bill and against cloture.”