Since coming to Capitol Hill, current Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been recognized by some in the media as a master strategist when it comes to playing the legislative rules for all they’re worth. But, with amendments to the Obama government health care takeover sailing through the Senate almost as quickly as they’re read, some conservative insiders are wondering why the GOP is not taking advantage of Senate rules to slow down the votes and delay the final vote until after Christmas.

That would be Harry Reid’s worst nightmare come true. According to the latest Rasmussen Poll, only 41% of Americans now support the Obama health care plan. And if the Senate Democrats are forced to go home and face voter wrath head-on over the Christmas holidays, it could spell the end for the legislation in the 111th Congress.

With that being the case, even some House leaders are wondering why McConnell doesn’t simply require unanimous consent on any, or every, amendment that comes to the floor. The maneuver would force Reid to get 60 votes before proceeding on each amendment. And some of the bill’s opponents are suggesting it could sideline it until next Christmas.

Of course, it is looking more and more likely that Mitch McConnell actually wants the legislation to pass. He seems to be gambling that if it passes, he becomes Senate Majority Leader.

When Republicans ran Washington, Democrats regularly complained that they were terrible managers. They argued that because of Republican incompetence, deficits were high, deadlines were missed, money was wasted, and rules were ignored. It called to mind PJ O’Rourke’s famous quote about Republicans: The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.

House Democrats, increasingly concerned that there may be no other way to clear spending measures and extend expiring programs by the end of the month, are nearly ready to resort to a multibill omnibus package.

The legislative traffic jam is particularly bad this year because of the Senate’s lagging health care debate, which may take weeks to untangle, preventing that chamber from moving quickly on year-end business.

At the top of the Democratic majority’s must-do list are the seven remaining fiscal 2010 appropriations bills. One idea under serious consideration, according to House Democratic aides, is moving those bills in a single package that would carry other items, including an increase in the debt limit, a one-year “fix” to prevent a cut in Medicare payments to physicians and a short-term extension of expiring provisions of the anti-terrorism law known as the Patriot Act.

Read More →

Call your Senator right now. Use this link to bypass the congressional switchboard.

Tell your Senator to vote NO on cloture for the motion to proceed to debate.

If the health care legislation goes to debate, Harry Reid will start offering amendments to pick off votes.

Call your Senator right now. Tell them both that a yes vote on cloture is a vote for the health care bill. The Congressional Research Service’s latest study proves that.

The truth is out there: Harry Reid has no idea what to do to create jobs.

Via Jim Geraghty

This is significant:

Senate Democrats have abandoned plans to use a fast-track parliamentary strategy to avert a threatened Republican filibuster and pass a health care overhaul — a signal that they are considering major policy concessions to moderates.

The most significant of these could be restructuring or dropping altogether a proposed

government-run insurance plan — the so-called public option — that many liberals consider a necessary part of the overhaul.

One possible fallback is a proposal by Thomas R. Carper, D-Del., to create a government-sanctioned insurance plan that would be available only in states deemed to lack affordable private insurance plans. Under Carper’s plan, the insurance plan would be structured as a private nonprofit entity, run by a board appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate…

Read More →

This week, the Senate votes on President Obama’s nomination of District Court Judge David Hamilton to the Seventh Circuit.  Because of Hamilton’s fundraising activities for ACORN, his leadership positions with the Indiana branch of the ACLU, his statements supporting judicial activism, and most importantly, his rulings putting liberal ideology above the rule of law, he is the first and only Obama circuit nominee to draw heated opposition.

There are many examples of Judge Hamilton’s tendency towards liberal judicial activism.  However, the most bizarre and controversial instance is Hamilton’s 2005 ruling prohibiting prayers that mention Jesus Christ in the Indiana House of Representatives, but allowing prayers that mention Allah.  While troubling in any context, the religious double standard in Hamilton’s ruling is particularly deserving of close scrutiny in light of Major Nidal Hasan’s recent shooting rampage at Fort Hood. 

Read More →

Under the unique rules of the United States Senate, a member of the body may insist legislation actually be read before a vote is cast on the legislation.

After threatening to do that, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has now confirmed the health care bill must be read. Republicans will also try to filibuster the health care legislation. The Democrats will need 60 votes to proceed, which they will try to get sometime around Friday.

Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Ben Nelson (D-NE), and Bill Nelson (D-FL) are key votes on this. If those three Democrats vote to end the filibuster, they are, in effect, voting for passage of the health care legislation — voting to end the filibuster and against final passage is a clever way Democrats up for re-election have found to pass bills they love, but know they cannot support.

They ensure the legislation has enough votes to pass by a simple majority and then vote to end the filibuster, which requires a super majority. Then these erstwhile Democrats vote against the legislation’s actual passage knowing it will pass even if they vote no.

I suspect voters will remember these tricks next year and punish them.

Dem Senators are peeling off of President Obama’s government takeover of health care and its liberal fantasy land that spends more than a trillion and contains hundreds of billions in new taxes.

As James Carville told CNN, President Obama only has 57 votes.

Reuters James Pethokoukis is reporting that Senators Liberman, Landrieu and Nelson are at NO, and Bayh maybe too. Pethokoukis is reporting the same thing Hammond said in his memo, that reconciliation is a no-go. (Politico is reporting, correctly, that reconciliation rules would strip the Stupak amendment.)

As we all know, no 60 votes, no laundry. (Senator Reid needs 60 votes to break the filibuster on the motion to proceed to consider the bill. If he does not get 60 votes, ObamaCare never comes up on the Senate floor.)

There are whispers in Washington watering holes that some Dem Senators are quietly hoping Senator Nelson will vote against cloture on the motion to proceed. This will let the Senators who are up in 2010 off the hook from the nightmare of proceeding to this politically toxic bill.

Read More →

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. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised today the final health care bill will include a controversial public option insurance plan, contrary to recent indications by Democratic staffers that such provisions might be eliminated to make the reforms more palatable for moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats.

“We are going to have a public option before this bill goes to the president’s desk,” Reid said Thursday afternoon on a conference call with constituents.

But the Nevada Democrat, who is tasked with reconciling the competing Senate committee versions of the bill, yesterday told reporters the final bill would not be fashioned until the White House and leaders of the Finance and HELP committees had been consulted.

“Once that’s done, we’ll decide jointly as to what should be in that bill,” he said.

On Wednesday, the final bill hinges on consultation with Senate leadership and the President. Thursday, news surfaces that suggests Reid has consolidated the two Senate versions, and opted for the more progressive. There exists only two possible explanations. Harry Reid is either the single most productive member of Congress or he’s circumventing Democratic leaders—and the Ranking Republicans of the HELP and Finance committees—to advance his own agenda.

While Reid’s comments will likely embolden disaffected progressives, they promise to marginalize Democratic Senators Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu and Republican Senator Olympia Snowe.

Some Democratic leaders maintain there’s no “line in the sand” in the health care overhaul, signaling the potential for negotiations with Republicans. Still, Reid’s comments today represent the increasing vulnerability of Democrats to attacks from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party for rejecting the public option.

Highlighting this vulnerability, Daily Kos Founder Markos Moulitsas wrote on Twitter today, “Blanche Lincoln will soon wonder why no one is riding to her rescue, or [cares] about her possibly losing.”

Moderate Democrats must fall in line like Speaker Reid or risk losing deep-pocketed progressive donors and online advocates like Moulitsas.

Read More →

Background information available here: the executive summary is that the Inspector General of Americorps was fired earlier this year, under circumstances that appear at best to be part of a whitewash of an administration crony.  Senator Grassley (R) of Iowa has taken an interest in the case, and is making it clear that he’s not going away:

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley has blocked the ambassadorial nomination of Alan Solomont, currently chairman of the board of the government agency that oversees AmeriCorps, in retaliation for what Grassley says is the administration’s stonewalling of Congress over documents relating to the firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. Specifically, Grassley has sought, and been denied, information relating to the White House’s role in the decision to fire Walpin.

Solomont, a major Democratic donor, is chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which includes AmeriCorps. His term ends in October, and President Obama has nominated him to be U.S. ambassador to Spain. The nomination was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week and now moves to the Senate floor — except that Grassley has placed a hold on it, meaning it will go nowhere until the senator’s objections are resolved.

Read More →

Harry Reid must really be in danger of losing his Senate seat.

Today Harry Reid sent out a press release to the national media praising Senator Baucus for his new proposal on health care reform.

There’s just one problem. And it could be fatal to Harry Reid’s re-election chances in Nevada.

While Reid was praising Baucus to the national press corp, in Nevada he sent out a press release severely critical of the Baucus plan and said it was a raw deal for Nevada.

Harry Reid wants to have it both ways. He can’t.

Jobs, health care, energy, deficits, Afghanistan, the general war on terror - all these are things that Congress should be working on. Indeed, Democrats are endlessly telling us that whatever priority they have cooked up, must be passed right now! But when the Senate is actually scheduled to be in session - purportedly addressing your concerns - they are delaying official business to let Arlen Specter raise money for his re-election campaign?

Reid announced Friday that the Senate would hold no votes after 3 p.m. Tuesday. His office later said that the scheduling decision was meant to accommodate a long-planned fundraiser that President Obama is headlining in Philadelphia to benefit Specter’s campaign.

The move could delay efforts to finish work on the fiscal 2010 transportation spending bill, which the Senate began considering Thursday…

Read More →

As Harry Reid continues his tour of self-destruction, he really shot himself in the foot today.

The Majority Leader of the United States Senate is in a celebratory mood because Ted Kennedy died.

Really.

In an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal, he’s asked out Ted Kennedy’s death will affect the healthcare debate. His response:

I think it’s going to help us. He hasn’t been around for some time. We’re going to have a new chairman of that committee, it’ll be, I don’t know for sure, but I think Sen. (Chris) Dodd, (D-Conn.). He has a right to take it. Either him or (U.S. Sen. Tom) Harkin, (D-Iowa), whichever one wants it can have it. I think he (Kennedy) will be a help. He’s an inspiration for us. That was the issue of his life and he didn’t get it done.

Hat tip to Glenn Thrush at the Politico.

As Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas navigates the political minefield of health care reform, the two-term Democrat may be hewing a more conservative course in the wake of a new poll by Public Policy Polling which found her in a dead heat with three potential Republican challengers despite scant name recognition.

PPP, whose sampling of voters skewed Democratic, found that only 36% of respondents approve of Lincoln’s job performance, while 44% say they disprove. In March of this year, the same outfit found that Lincoln maintained an approval rating with a 5-point positive spread.

The three would-be GOP challengers polled included state Senator Gilbert Baker, Huckabee fundraiser Curtis Coleman and Harvard-educated lawyer and U.S. Army veteran Tom Cotton. Among them, Baker performed the best; however a majority of Arkansans—ranging from 78% to 83%—were unsure of their opinions on the three men.

“You couldn’t get a clearer indication that the national momentum is with Republicans right now than a poll showing some guys with single digit name recognition running even with an incumbent Senator,” said PPP’s Dean Debnam.

With Obama’s health care proposal fairing worse in the polls than former President Clinton’s defeated reforms of 1994, Lincoln must take into consideration the consequences of supporting the President’s contentious legislation in a state whose voters ten months ago gave Republican John McCain 59% of the vote.

What’s more, the hemorrhaging of Democratic support to wavering public opinion raises a serious dilemma for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and poses an acute challenge to the President’s legislative agenda, as Democrats today lost their filibuster-proof majority with the death of Senator Ted Kennedy.

Reid must accept the political reality that Lincoln, who previously bucked party leadership on the cap-and-trade legislation designed to reduce carbon emissions and the reauthorization of banking infusion, may be the next casualty in the polarized health care debate.

Read More →

Reading this post by Mickey Kaus made me realize something.

The idea of postponing health care reform–until, say, the economy improves– doesn’t seem appealing to many Democrats now. But it might soon. The problem, as Michael Goodwin’s recent column points out, is that the issues waiting in the wings–should health care leave the stage–are even worse, from the Democrats’ political perspective. Cap and trade, immigration legalization, “card check”–these are not what you’d call confidence building appetizers leading up to the main course of Obama’s presidency. Plus the Afghan War! At least a clear majority of the public wants something done about health care….

It’s easy to forget that, even if Obama’s health care effort is bogging down, the effort itself still serves his presidency as a crucial time-waster, tying up Congress and giving him a reason to postpone (or the public a reason to ignore) those other divisive, presidency-killers.

It was not until after 1994 that Bill Clinton really stretched his legs. As much as Clinton had “gays in the military” and “Hillarycare” in the months before the Republican take over of Congress, he’s really known for what? Well, if we’re serious about his legacy — Kosovo, Welfare Reform, Standing Up to Newt, and Impeachment.

Clinton shines as a model of what a Democratic Presidency can be when fighting against Republicans at home and in multinational coalitions abroad. Impeachment has a mixed meaning for him, but among Democrats and Independents, they typically see it as out of control Republicans and a philandering President with the President coming out looking better than the GOP.

Republicans controlling Congress gave Bill Clinton a political opposition from which he could set himself a part. Clinton could be contrasted with the GOP. He could not, pre-1994, viably do that because his party controlled the White House and Congress.

What is Barack Obama’s worst nightmare?

Democrats keeping Congress in 2010.

Read More →

See it for yourself below, as Bill Burton, a spokesman for Barack Obama’s White House, says:

I don’t think that Speaker Pelosi was just claiming that people were wearing swastikas [at health care town hall meetings]; people are showing up to events with swastikas, dressed up as Hitler, with signs invoking Nazi Germany, so that’s not something that’s being made up.

Video:

The DC Examiner’s David Freddoso tried to run down this claim, and hit a stone wall:

White House spokesman Bill Burton’s statement on television earlier today that people are showing up at health care town halls dressed up as Hitler was outlandish enough that I had to call the White House and ask if there is anything to substantiate it.

As of this evening, the White House has offered no explanation for this bizarre claim.

By the way, the laugher line of Burton’s interview was the seven-word claim, “We’re trying to have a constructive debate.”

Calling your opponents a dangerous mob of swastika-wearing Hitlers and calling out SEIU thugs to beat them into submissive silence (not to mention setting up an informant tipline by which those who question Obama’s health plan in “casual conversation” can be turned in to the government) is one heck of a way to “have a constructive debate,” there, Bill. Well done.

UPDATE: According to The Hill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has now taken to referring to those who question Obamacare as “evil-mongers.” Classy, Senator.

Wow. Just wow.

New poll in Nevada by Vitale & Associates (July 29-30, 510 LV, MoE +/-4.4%) shows incumbent Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid losing by six points to Sue Lowden, chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Party, 44-38, with 10% undecided.

Real Clear Politics has more.

You can consider this an open thread.