It is so important, it bears repeating:
“I’ll vote against any bill without a public option,” said Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill.
The quote is from ABC News, and right before the Burris-bomb, is this little ticking surprise for Reid:
“There are at least two Democrats who say they’ll vote against any bill that does not include a public option, and there may be many more.”
Perhaps Senator Lieberman’s courage is contagious.
HOE-HOE-HOE, oh, it’s not Christmas — yet. But Harry Reid is playing the sit-on-my-lap-Santa to lap-dog Senator Mary Landrieu, with a $100 million surprise. (They look so cute.)
Why not buy Senator Landrieu for $100 million, since the United States is electronically creating $1 trillion a year to finance our debt, what’s another $100 million?
When the crash comes, this is will be Exhibit A of how the Democrats do not care about your tax money, how they are greedy and irresponsible with public monies and why they cannot be trusted with their hands on the U.S. currency printing press. They cannot say no. They keep spending and spending and spending and they will never stop.
Aside from the moral and financial implications of this sorid tale — the politics of it make little sense.
(Here is the let me get this straight moment:) giving Mary Landrieu $100 million for Medicaid (the Federal and State funded program to provide health care to the low-income) will help her politically because (please take the multiple choice quiz below):
a) Medicaid voters will have voted against her in the 2010 mid-term election, this will help with that wavering constituency;
b) Medicaid voters make up the independents and moderate Democrats and Republican voters who oppose the health bill;
c) Medicaid voters who left the state after Katrina by the hundreds of thousands, have moved back to Louisiana;
d) None of the above.
And the answer is d), none of the above.
This $100 million is the cover story for her yes vote, and she will no longer be a U.S. Senator, since the demographics of Louisiana have changed so profoundly, and the vast majority of voters who have left are Democrats.
The prayers of her Republican opponent have been answered — she is going to vote YES.
Good-bye Senator Landrieu.
Scalpel!
Senator Reid’s very qualified and really one of the best press guys in the city, announced yesterday that Senator Reid has filed the paperwork so the he will be able to proceed to the cloture motion on the motion to proceed next week.
This means that if Senator Reid gets 60 votes, he can bring the House bill up before the Senate.
If he does not get 60 votes, no bill comes before the U.S. Senate. Or Senator Reid may do what he did on the Doc fix — the unpaid for $250 billion Medicare spending bill — bring it up so it can fail — and then go back to the backroom to negotiate. Pretty clear and simple, yes?
For more information about what the future for ObamaCare will be, here is today’s video interview with Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) about his views of the Senate health care bill. Pay attention to the Senator’s quote “it’ll never get here.”
Then, turn off the sound, watch the interviewer and the Senator’s body language. What do you see?
While Senator Snowe’s yes vote in the Senate Finance Committee was a shock to liberals and conservatives, it is neither a defeat for conservatives nor a victory for liberals. The bill would have passed Committee regardless of how Sen. Snowe voted.
Senator Snowe, in her own words, said her vote was a maybe on the Senate floor. Smart political observers like Carrie Budoff Brown at Politico understand that Snowe’s vote radically increases the likelihood of Dem-on-Dem political violence over any single significant move to the left that the Democratic Leadership contemplates when they attempt to merge the bill.
Think of the Snowe vote as tent pegs holding the bill in place, while liberal generated wind storms attempt to move the tent to the left. The chances of the pegs coming out and the tent being blown like a tumbleweed are real and will be devastating to the bill.
Plus, Senator Snowe’s voice now carries a high-wattage amplifier with it inside the Democratic leadership. The liberals want a public option? Lose Snowe. Want to bring up a Vapor bill? Snowe is at no. Want to spring legislative language on the Senate without a CBO score of the language? Snowe is at no and so are eight other Democratic Senators who sent a letter to Majority Leader Reid last week requesting a CBO score on actual legislative language and a 72 hour review period by the public of the bill prior to its consideration on the Senate floor. The letter was backed up with threats by the Democratic Senators to employ procedural hurdles if there request is not met, as Congressional Quarterly reported on October 6:
From the Obama Experiment.
Taxes on your health plan, penalties for not buying one, and taxes on all sorts of health care services — all passed on to you, the patient.
This story is about free speech and doing buisness with the Federal Government. It was first reported in the Wall Street Journal. and ABC News (see video below) runs the first part Senator McConnell’s Senate floor speech about this HHS gag order.
Did I mention that HHS are the ones that will be running your health plan in the Health Information Exchange under ObamaCare?
The words tax/taxes and fine/fines appear in the Senator Baucus bill 243 times.
There are Not Enough Votes for the Baucus Bill to be Voted Out of the Finance Committee
Without Senators Wyden, Rockefeller and Snowe, Chairman Baucus does not have the votes to pass the bill out of the Senate Finance Committee.
This means there will be horse trading a-go-go and the results will be interesting.
Senators Wyden and Rockefeller are most upset about no public option being in the plan.
CBO Scores Senate Finance Committee Bill at $500 Billion — No increase in the Deficit
The Congressional Budget Office has scored the Senate Finance Committee bill at a cost of $500 Billion with a net deficit reduction of $49 billion because of the taxes and cuts to Medicare.
Sen. Rockefeller (D-WV) and Finance Committee Member says Senate Bill has a “Big, Big Tax”
Senator Rockefeller warning of a “big, big tax” on the middle class to pay for ObamaCare is very, very strange.
It would be like a staunch Republican warning that a planned tax cut is too big.
The only conclusion that can be reached is that health care reform has so stressed and strained Members of Congress and their constituents that these stresses are manifesting themselves in very, uh, unique ways.
It is August and, well, its August, so here are a few quotes from the health care reform chaos, click on the last name of the author (in bold below) to read the whole article.
He underwent diagnostic tests using the latest, most advanced imaging technology available in the world. He was treated at some of the most elite medical centers in the country. He received the latest therapies and accessed the most innovative medical care in the world. When he sought out the best doctors, when he needed access to the latest diagnostic tests, the most sophisticated surgical techniques, the most innovative medical therapies, Kennedy enjoyed the best care available anywhere in the world–right here in the U.S.
With the political prognosis for health care reform turning from poor to likely terminal, many of my fellow Democrats are grieving through grievance. They’re lashing out at friends and foes alike, blaming everyone….Everyone, that is, except themselves, the people who controlled Congress, set the agenda, wrote the legislation and developed the strategy for pushing it.
Obamacare Version 1.0 is dead….You don’t need a Ph.D. to see that the promise to expand coverage and reduce costs is a crude deception, or that cutting $500 billion from Medicare without affecting care is a fiction.
Barring a major public groundswell or miraculous reversal in Congress, Barack Obama’s healthcare reform package will not include the provision that matters most to the Democratic base, the so-called public option….Earlier this week, during an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Sen. Kent Conrad said flatly that there “was never enough support” in his chamber for the public option.
ABC News thinks it has a big story this morning. They’re highlighting it all over their website.
According to George Stephanopolous, Eric Cantor (R-VA) publicly rejected Rush LImbaugh’s rhetoric.
It is an absolute lie.
