Dana Milbank of the Washington Post is funny, in his rendition of Majority Leader Reid and his quest to put $250 billion in ObamaCare off-budget, adding it to the deficit. It really is worth the read, here are his first paragraphs:

“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits, either now or in the future — period,” President Obama told Congress in a health-care address last month.

Well, that depends on what the meaning of “plan” is….So Democrats hatched a novel scheme: They would pass the legislation separately, so the $250 billion cost wouldn’t be part of the main reform “plan,” thereby allowing the president to claim that that bill wouldn’t increase the deficit.

Or this: “Finally we’re coming to the first vote on health-care reform, and what do the Democrats propose to do?” Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) asked at the microphones. “They propose to raise the national debt by . . . a quarter of a trillion dollars, plus $50 billion interest.”

There is plenty of good stuff in the piece, especially the quote by Senator Reid who essentially said — I did it because the White House told me to do it (he lost the cloture vote on the motion to proceed 47 to 53, Reid needs 60 votes to shut down a filibuster.)

OK, I cannot resist to quote Milbank’s Senator Stabenow stuff:

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We, RedState readers, have defeated Harry Reid today and delivered a significant blow to the potential passage of Obamacare. We held every Republican Senator including Olympia Snowe and Richard Burr.

Harry Reid just ran to the Senate floor and cried that he cannot get enough votes to pass the doctors’ bribe to support Obamacare. He blamed the AMA for misleading him.

He might actually want to look to RedState. Our readers have generated hundreds and hundreds of phone calls in 24 hours to pretty much every Republican Senator. Several who had considered voting for cloture backed down.

And now the end run around Obamacare costs has been defeated.

This makes it much more difficult for Obamacare to pass and virtually impossible for it to pass without significant deficit blowing cost additions.

Well done activists!

Call your Senator and Representative — particularly those of you in Republican states and districts — and tell them to oppose S. 1776, a $247 billion doc fix that isn’t paid for and enables the passage of Obamacare. 

Click the link to go to our action center.

Not all the action on healthcare reform is happening in smoke filled rooms. 
 
This week the Senate is considering its next payoff to a powerful lobbying group—a $247 billion package for the American Medical Association.  The funding is not offset and would dramatically increase the deficit.  Harry Reid is betting that the bill will prove politically impossible for most Senators, including Republicans, to oppose as it addresses the number one priority for most doctors over the years—the fact that Medicare doesn’t reimburse them enough.  By considering the “doc fix” apart from overall healthcare reform, he and Max Baucus remove a major cost to that package.  As Senator McConnell said, “This is so transparent. They’re taking this issue out of health care, suggesting that we spend a quarter of a trillion dollars, not pay for it, so that they can then argue, the very next week potentially, that this trillion-dollar health care bill is paid for.” 

Even the media is reporting this is a bribe. Harry Reid will pay off the doctors’ lobby and in exchange the doctors lobby will support Obamacare.
 
The strategy is simple.

• Payoff the docs;
• Make your bill appear to cost less; and,
• Force Republicans to choose between their doctors and the fiscal health of the nation.

 
Now to be fair even many conservatives agree that Medicare’s physician reimbursements are set ridiculously low, amounting to a form of price controls on the system.  And since doctors don’t have to participate in Medicare or take new seniors on as patients, if reimbursements are set too low, it creates access problems.  That has led many to support short-term fixes that are often paid for with other spending reductions as stop-gaps until the overall system could be reformed.  But let’s remember something folks.  Medicare is a government-run healthcare program—the fact that it proves so costly that price controls are adopted is exactly what we’ve been arguing the future holds if Obamacare gets passed.  Making it work right is not something that Republicans in Congress should sell their soul to fix and its certainly not something that should be allowed to enable a government takeover of the health care system. 
 
Republicans need to fight this for what it is—a quarter of a trillion dollar payoff to the AMA to get them to keep supporting Obamacare.  This will be a great litmus test of whether Republican claims of fiscal responsibility have any merit whatsoever.  It’s easy to oppose a nearly trillion dollar stimulus and a nearly trillion dollar health takeover.  It’s hard to tell your doctors back home, in the words of the immortal Meatloaf, that you’d do anything for love but won’t you do that.  But that is exactly how we activists will ever know that Republicans have gotten our message—when they learn to say no to their voters when it comes to spending. 
 
A brief message to you doctors out there, many of you good Republicans.  Seriously, chill out.  Congress is not going to let your reimbursements get cut so stop believing your AMA spam—from the same people who are no doubt enjoying their coffee and donuts over in Rahm Emmanuel’s office.  These people (at least their lobbyists in DC) don’t want you to be free; they want you to be slaves to government in as much as many of you are already to Medicare.  Don’t let that happen on your watch and with your dues and don’t be fooled by this shell game happening in the Senate and presumably soon in the House of Representatives. 
 
Call your Senator and Representative — particularly those of you in Republican states and districts — and tell them to oppose S. 1776, a $247 billion doc fix that isn’t paid for and enables the passage of Obamacare. 

Desperate men do desperate things, and those who have any doubt just how desperate the Dems are over passing health reform should read the Washington Post editorial that puts the lie to what the White House and Senate Majority Leader Reid are attempting to do — put $241 billion in new health reform spending off-budget.

Off-budget is Washington speak for lets-spend-the-money-but-not-count-that-we-are-spending-it. Taking ever so slight liberties with Senator Gregg´s recent comments, this is more bananization of our republic.

President Obama and Majority Leader Ried are lying to make their other lie about health reform not adding to the deficit a less visible lie.

It´s just like printing money, let´s all just pretend that we are not going to spend $241 billion to buy off the American Medical Association´s continued political cover for our politically failing health care reform plan. It´s easy, just declare its off-budget and it does not count.

When RedState starts quoting the Washington Post editorial board, the outrage committed by the White House and Majority Leader Reid must be so great, that even the WaPo editorial board cannot bear it:

IN THE WORLD according to Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), setting Medicare payment levels for doctors has nothing to do with health reform. Really.

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The American Medical Association, in comments in response to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee legislative options discussion draft, stated that they are opposed to a public plan option.

This puts the American Medical Association at odds with both President Obama and Speaker Pelosi, who has said she will not let a bill out of the U.S. House without a public plan option.

This news was reported in the New York Times here, and below are the most relevant excerpts:

“While committed to the goal of affordable health insurance for all, the association had said in a general statement of principles that health services should be “provided through private markets, as they are currently.” It is now reacting, for the first time, to specific legislative proposals being drafted by Congress.

“In the presidential campaign last year and in a letter to Congress last week, Mr. Obama called for a new “public health insurance option,” which he said would compete with private insurers and keep them honest.

“Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Wednesday that she supported that goal. “A bill will not come out of the House without a public option,” she said Wednesday on MSNBC.

“But in comments submitted to the Senate Finance Committee, the American Medical Association said: “The A.M.A. does not believe that creating a public health insurance option for non-disabled individuals under age 65 is the best way to expand health insurance coverage and lower costs. The introduction of a new public plan threatens to restrict patient choice by driving out private insurers, which currently provide coverage for nearly 70 percent of Americans.”

“If private insurers are pushed out of the market, the group said, “the corresponding surge in public plan participation would likely lead to an explosion of costs that would need to be absorbed by taxpayers.”