Sen. Hatch to House Dems: If you Pass it, You Will Have to Vote on it Again


One of the most amusing things about watching the Dems who are going to vote YES is that they are simply misinformed about what the Senate is going to do, and what the House must then do.

Even when their own Democratic Senators tell them — the sheep that are Yes in the House don’t listen.

Senator Hatch was repeating what Dem Senate Budget Committee Chairman Senator Conrad has already tried to inform the U.S. House:

Republican Senator Orrin Hatch said Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives are “nuts” to think tomorrow’s vote on health-care legislation will resolve the issue.

If the measure passes, Senate Republicans have enough votes on at least two points of order to alter the measure and send it back to the House for a second round of votes, Hatch said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend.

“If those people think they’re only going to vote on this once, they’re nuts,” Hatch said

I am simply explaining this scenario because the implications of it should provide the Dems with yet another reason to vote No — not because I suddenly think the bill will pass.

Read More →


FOX NEWS and their “vote count”


FOX News ought to be ashamed of itself. Pushing their only two away, only one away, the Dems have the votes, they are at plus one in the Yes vote tally. They were wrong when they reported it and they are still wrong.

While FOX News was reporting that the Fat Lady has already sung, the pro-Dem Washington Post is reporting the Dems are “feverish” in their panting efforts to secure the votes.

GOP House Whip Cantor says the Dems do not have the votes, so does FireDogLake.

I know they don’t have the votes. If FOX News was right, the Dems would be having a vote today — but instead they are having a team spirit rally — the modern day versions of drugs before a suicide bomber kills themselves and others.

Anyone at FOX News reading this — insert the most passionate and insulting string of swearing and cursing, apply it to yourself and, perhaps, if you double the intensity to some super-human version — you may begin to reach the depths of my feelings towards what you did. For your incompetence, mostly.

Read More →

Category:

“Mr. President, I send an unprinted Amendment to the desk,”


“Mr. President, I send an unprinted Amendment to the desk, and ask for its immediate consideration,” are the exact words that any U.S. Senator can say when offering this amendment on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

This amendment, below, should be walked down to the floor of the U.S. Senate and voted on prior to any vote on the floor of the U.S. House, in order to prepare the legal battlefield for the court challenge against the Alice-in-Wonderland-like-Red-Queen, Speaker Pelosi, and her dictatorial and unconstitutional scheme to pass the Senate Health Care bill without voting on it. While we are uncertain that we will be fighting on this ground, it is essential to prepare the battlefield, if we do.

This amendment, I am reliably advised, was written by a former judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals who was on President Bush’s short list for the Supreme Court (Roberts beat him out) and is recently retired and is teaching Constitutional law at one of the most prestigious national law schools at University on the west coast.

So, in other words, don’t mess with the language of this amendment. Just launch it, now on whatever bill is now pending on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

START OF TEXT OF THE AMENDMENT:

Read More →


It’s Unofficial: “Revenue Neutral”


The natural reaction by most Americans to the unofficial and preliminary claim that the $2.5 Trillion ObamaCare bill is revenue-neutral is, well, B.S. (There is a card game with the same name.)

The second natural reaction is the realization that ObamaCare must cut the guts out of Medicare and raise taxes through the roof.

All of the above are reasonable and accurate reactions to the latest Speaker Pelosi counter-attack from Wonderland.


The Fog of War has Enveloped the Speaker


Having been up on the House side for the last two days, I can report that the fog of war has enveloped the Speaker and will attempt to explain why the Speaker is losing. CNN puts the Speaker down 11 votes, FireDogLake puts the Speaker down 25 — Yes at 190 — she needs 216.

This is a classic political battle: conflicting reports, disinformation and propaganda (two distinct things) moles, the light and dark roles of key operatives, overlaid with the impact of time — and those “inside the decision cycle” of their enemy.

The basic problem for the Speaker and her team is the enemy (to them, that’s us) is inside their decision cycle.

The greatest defense the Speaker has had against this happening before now has been her irrational behavior. But the predictability factor has skyrocketed because the Speaker and the White House — aka Axelrod and Valerie J. and the One — are fully committed to a knowingly destructive course of action: a vote to “pass the Senate bill without voting on it.”

This is what we know:

Read More →


Slaughter Rule gives No Votes Cover from the Left & the Right


Does the Slaughter “pass the bill without voting on it” plan give the No votes political cover from both the left and the right?

Cover from the left: the undecideds who vote No could then say — I did not vote against the President’s health reform plan, I voted against the rule.

Cover from the right: the No votes can also say they were not comfortable with “passing the bill without voting on it.”

Cover for the White House: after losing the vote in the House, Obama can turn the lemon into lemonade — my health care plan did not fail in the House, the rule failed.

Cover for the Speaker: the rule on the Senate health plan failed, not the House health plan.

Now, the Speaker and the White House can go ahead and vote — and lose the vote on the rule, without losing too much face.


Procedure is Politics


I spent the day on Capitol Hill yesterday talking to House Dems and will be there all day today too. Here are seven reasons the Senate GOP, with Senator Byrd, are going to blindside the House Dems:

Read More →


What the in-play Dems are saying About ObamaCare


The following was emailed to me from a friend:

Rep. John Adler (D-N.J.): If the House and Senate can’t work out cost containment, I don’t see how I could support a bill that doesn’t help our business community,” Rep. John Adler (D., N.J.) said on “Fox News Sunday.” (John D. McKinnon and Jared Favole, “Democrats Voice Health-Bill Doubts,” The Wall Street Journal, 3/8/10)

Rep. John Adler (D-N.J.): “If the House and the Senate can’t work out cost containment, I don’t see how I support a bill that doesn’t help our business community and create more jobs.” (Fox News Sunday, 3/7/10)

Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA): “Is she going to be able to hold everybody that was for it before?” Altmire asked. “What about the marginal members in the middle who got hammered over this vote and would love a second chance to perhaps go against it?” (Erica Werner, “Hoyer: Comprehensive Health Bill May Be No Go,” The Associated Press, 2/23/10)

Read More →


Trying to Pass the Bill without Voting on it will Rank up with the Nebraska Kickback


Even the Dem supporters and defenders know they are down big in the whip count (this one is from FireDogLake) and even Clive Cook writing in the Financial Times acknowledges that the Dems have lost the war of public opinion:

the line taken by defenders of comprehensive healthcare reform goes like this. Yes, the public opposes the Democrats’ proposals, but it is the process more than the product that voters question.

But when supporters (Cook says he is one) warn the Dems of more process perversion, then you know it’s bad for the Dems:

In the last big push to get reform through, using whatever deals, scams, ruses and parliamentary evasions fall to hand, the public and their concerns are pushed ever more to the periphery of Washington’s vision.

Read More →


Axelrod, Gibbs, and Pelosi — Why Not Vote Tomorrow?


Axelrod, message maven for Obama, says they will have the votes in the House. Really. It says so right here, on ABC NEWS.

And Chuck Todd of NBC News tweets:

Clyburn on #MTP (Meet the Press) says House Dems do NOT yet have the votes. Matches Pelosi who said “when you have the votes, you call the vote.”

AP is now also reporting the U.S. House Whip Clyburn admitting they do not have the votes. Up until now, Clyburn has been trying to dodge the vote count question by saying he did not have a bill to whip, because they don’t know what is in it. (Vapor bill, part infinite.)

But the crush of events has used up those who-me?-I-dunno excuses. Now, Clyburn must admit the truth, they don’t have the votes.

Meanwhile, at the White House, Gibbs is proclaiming that a week from today ObamaCare will be the “law of the land.”

But they still have not scheduled a vote. And the vote was Thursday, then Friday and now they are talking about Saturday.

Simply put, they do not have the votes, with or without there “we’re going to pass the bill without voting on it” outrage — during “Sunshine Week” for transparent government. Ha, ha, ha.


Is Passing Health Care Forgivable?


The vast majority of likely voters strongly oppose ObamaCare — and the best word to sum up the emotions and frustrations of those voters who have had to endure the insanity of the health care jihadists is that they hate ObamaCare.

And the two largest subsets of those strongly opposed are independents and senior citizens. Just ask Scott Brown’s campaign staff. He figured out real early that he could just walk into a nursing home and tell the seniors ObamaCare would cut half a trillion from Medicare.

Done. Next nursing home please.

And then, this fall in the mid-term elections, add ridicule to Medicare cuts: Washington thinks you can lower the deficit by spending $2.5 trillion on ObamaCare. Really. Congress says so.

Read More →


ObamaCare will Fail in the House Next Week, if they Vote — UPDATED


They announced they are planning to have a vote next week, but the Speaker is still looking for “certain assurances” from the U.S. Senate.

They do not have the votes to pass it. Here is the latest from The Hill newspaper’s Whip Count:

Thirty-four House Democrats are either firm no votes or leaning no, according to The Hill’s whip list. Dozens more are undecided.

The list of Democratic members who haven’t committed ranges widely, from liberal Reps. Michael Capuano (Mass.) and Anthony Weiner (N.Y.) to centrist Reps. Jason Altmire (Pa.) and Chris Carney (Pa.).

Two committee chairmen — Reps. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) — say they are firm nos and three others, Reps. John Spratt (D-S.C.), Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) and Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), are undecided.

If every House member votes and all Republicans reject the bill as expected, Pelosi can only afford 37 Democratic defections.

Read More →


“Passing Bills without Voting On Them”


In the latest Mad-Magazine-like-Spy-vs.-Spy move, the House Dems have hatched a plan which reminds me of their ill-fated plan to delay seating Senator-elect Scott Brown until they had another ObamaCare vote on the Senate floor.

The Dems backed down. Similarly, they will back down from the Slaughter plan.

Former Speaker Gingrich describes the Slaughter plan in a tweet about a Brian Darling blog:

“Incredible. We’ve gone from passing bills without reading them to passing bills without voting on them.”

They haven’t tried it yet, they are thinking about it.

But now that the Senate Parliamentarian has ruled the obvious, that you can not vote on a reconciliation measure if the bill you are attempting to reconcile has not been signed into law — the Slaughter plan looks both desperate and comical.

It is also (obviously) unconstitutional and will, if carried out, create a public outcry that will make burning witches at the stake look rational.

Just like the Black Spy thought the White Spy was caged and an easy target, the trillion dollar President and the Speaker find themselves without the votes and trying again to cheat the U.S. Constitution, public opinion and voters who want Congress to stop the irrational ObamaCare quest and start over. Their persistent problem is they keep causing their colleagues mortal political harm with their increasingly hare-brained-Slaughter schemes.

You know, like lets-use-reconciliation-to-pass-the-hated-Senate-ObamaCare-bill. (It’s no shock that Obama has hit his lowest Gallup poll approval rating ever.)

Ironically, the trillion dollar President has created a bi-partisan health care effort, it’s just that it’s a bi-partisan alliance against his bill. What is causing cognitive dissonance in the White House and among the Democratic Party’s cognoscenti is the simple fact that the only thing bi-partisan about ObamaCare is the opposition to it.

Read More →


23 Dem Yes Votes on ObamaCare Switch to Undecided


The Speaker’s flip-flops are catching up with her.

And the strangeness is starting to show (see the video): we have to pass the Senate bill so the public can see what is in it.

Her famed control over house members minds is fading: She supported Chairman Rangel right up until she dumped him. She did not have the muscle to impose upon the Ways and Means Committee, her choice of Chairman.

And on ObamaCare, the Speaker insisted the Senate go first, that she could not pass the Senate bill, that the House would not be a rubber stamp for the Senate, and that the Senate must prove it will act as she says it will, which is for the Senate to change their own bill into a bill the House wants. Uh, huh.

But the Speaker has flipped on all of it. Now, the House will go first, the House will pass the Senate bill without changing it (i.e. rubber stamp) and the House will act without proof the Senate will actually act in the way the House wants it to act.

Furthermore, the Speaker must now insist the following will not happen: the White House will not take the House passed Senate bill, sign it, declare victory, and move onto jobs.

The Speaker must argue that the Senate and the White House will put itself through months of more ObamaCare political pain, by letting the Republicans bog down the bill in the Senate, in a huge fight that will be another example of the Dems changing the rules and ignoring the public to pass a bill independent voters and seniors hate.

But assuming you believe that reality will be suspended — that the irrational is rational — and the White House and the Senate will act to bail out the House from passing a bill they don’t agree with, then there is the immovable Byrd rule problem on any abortion “fix.”

The Bryd rule prohibits legislating on a reconciliation bill. The rule is named after the still-serving Senator Byrd (D-WV). Sixty votes are needed to over-ride the Byrd rule on reconciliation. Both the Byrd rule and Senator Byrd himself stands directly in the path of legislating on abortion on any reconciliation bill.

You see, Senator Byrd is very vigorous in his support of the Byrd rule. He will vote with the 41 Republicans to enforce the Byrd rule. And the Byrd rule is very clear on abortion — precedents have been set — you cannot legislate on abortion on a reconciliation bill.

Read More →


Political Instability and the Coming Defeat of ObamaCare


The media is now pulling out all the stops to help Obama win the House vote. They know he is in deep trouble and they need to help. And they will keep helping, reporting as if the vote is in the bag.

But do not fear. Jay Cost has the real house vote count. (Rep. Massa’s claims that he is the swing vote, notwithstanding.)

If you want to help, call the Members of Congress on Jay’s list, and follow it daily. Organize demonstrations in front of their offices. Put them on YouTube. Call them. Email them. Contribute money to their opponents. Seek out these Members of Congress in their districts. Button-hole them. Do not let up until the House votes. (Sorry Jay, your list is better than Minority Whip Cantor’s memo.)

There is more good news. Even former Majority Leader Senator Daschle, who has been the unseen hand pushing Obama on health care, says on video this is the end of the ObamaCare effort. After this, it is over.

By the way, ObamaCare did not die and rise back to life. It has been dead for a long time. The President, the Speaker, Axelrod and Plume keep insisting that it is alive because they live in a fantasyland bubble. (Don’t start living the dream too.) There is a view other than ObamaCare is dead or is alive. You could be like Hennessey: ObamaCare is both dead and alive. His piece is titled Health Care CPR, but in reality, Hennessey’s view is it is mostly dead.

The Speaker and the White House can not allow themselves to believe anything other than they will win, because they have developed the intellectual behavior of the politically irrational.

Look at this quote from fantasy-land-spinner-in-chief-David-Axelrod — the man the New York Times says is the last person the trillion dollar President talks to before making a decision:

Read More →


Killing ObamaCare is a Rational Act


One hour and forty minutes after the White House issued their Easter deadline for ObamaCare to pass Congress, Democratic House Leaders conceded “they may not meet President Barack Obama’s challenge for swift action.”

Whenever the House Leadership moves a vote, it means they don’t have the votes. In Spanish, that’s mañana.

With the White House issuing a deadline and the Dem House leaders immediately and publicly saying, not so much, the White House looks silly and limp and powerless. They look even more out of touch and desperate than they did when President Obama announced that he will not quit with his self-appointed Captain Ahab role of hunting the great-health-care-white-whale.

But the best news (finally) is that a group of Democrats are willing to have News at 11 film them shooting ObamaCare in the head.

Read More →


How to End the ObamaCare Nightmare


Ending this health care nightmare comes down to one thing, and one thing only: expend all remaining to defeat the Senate bill in the House.

The Speaker cannot pass the Senate bill now. She does not have the votes. She has never had the votes — ever, to pass the Senate bill. (The AP list of 9 Dems who voted No who may vote yes is a fantasyland list — as in, if you think they will switch to Yes, you are living in Fantasyland. If a member who did vote No, now, when the politics are so clearly against it, switches to a yes, they might as well just resign. Which some might. But, really, it is good-bye for No votes that switch to Yes.)

While No votes switching to Yes is not credible, here is something that is credible. Yes votes that switch to No.

There is one New York Dem Yes vote who announced today, is now a no:

“U.S. Rep. Michael Arcuri, D-Utica, said Tuesday he would vote against the Senate version of the health care bill that could soon go before the House of Representatives for approval.

“Arcuri, who voted in early November in favor of the House version of the health care bill, said he is against the Senate bill for three main reasons:

“He doesn’t want to see the bill passed as a “mega bill,” and he believes more success would be had by breaking the bill apart and passing aspects of it incrementally, he said.

“Arcuri also said he isn’t comfortable with the possible Democratic strategy of passing the bill through reconciliation.”

Read More →


Sen. Conrad: The House Goes First or ObamaCare Dies (Thank You Senator DeMint)


Senator Conrad, the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee said yesterday that reconciliation can only be used if the House passes the Senate bill first. As Sen. Conrad declared, “I don’t know of any way, I don’t know of any way where you can have a reconciliation bill pass before the bill that it is meant to reconcile passes.” Neither do I.

Then, the kicker: “When reminded that House Democrats don’t want to do health care in that order, Conrad said bluntly: ‘Fine, then it’s dead.‘”

Now, the Speaker finds herself in the position of having to pass a bill she says she does not have the votes to pass.

Without passing the Senate bill she can’t pass, the Speaker can’t do reconciliation. (See Sen. Conrad, above.)

OK. Now, this next part is really, really important.

Read More →


Video: Biden, Dodd, Feinstein and Schumer Attack “Nuclear Option”


This video (H/T Drudge Report) captures an important piece of recent history, when the GOP controlled the White House and the Senate. The Democrats repeatedly attacked the Republicans for attempting the “nuclear option.” Senator Reid described the Republican strategy as an arrogant power grab.

Senator Dodd said he has never in his time in the Senate passed any bill of any importance that did not have both a Democratic and Republican leader. Then Senator Biden said “I pray God when the Democrats take back control we don’t make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.”

The out-takes from this video will make some great 30 second campaign ads if the Dems try reconciliation.

Enjoy: