Fox News (Via Hot Air): President Obama will soon propose a health care bill that will be “much smaller” than the House bill but “big enough” to put the country on a “path” toward health care reform, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday. “In a matter of days, we will have a proposal,” Pelosi said, pointing to Obama’s forthcoming bill. “It will be a much | Read More »
Ed Morrissey sums up his major counter-argument thusly to Andy McCarthy’s argument that progressive Democrats are ready to trade control of Congress in exchange for imposing health care rationing on the populace: Andy may be right that Democratic leadership has made the decision that political oblivion is an acceptable cost for a one-time remaking of America that Republicans will find difficult to reverse in the | Read More »
When Hot Air and the Daily Beast are giving the same review – Republicans looked good, the President looked all right, other Democrats looked bad – you have to end up wondering whether the President actually minds. Jonah Goldberg fairly accurately sums up what Obama has to work with, after all: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi relied on the Democrats’ favorite rhetorical gambit: policy-by-anecdote. Invoking the | Read More »
If it seems that this video fails to take today’s health care Kabuki theater summit seriously, well: …think of it this way: it’s taking it just as seriously as the Democratic party is. The only difference here is that the NRCC swapped out Democratic arrogance for GOP mockery. Moe Lane Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Embargoed until 10 AM: now ask me if I care. here Haven’t read it fully yet, but skimming shows that it’s taken out Ben Nelson’s Nebraska payoff (at, I hear, the increasingly-panicky request of Ben Nelson himself); keeps insurance mandates; and if the public/government option or abortion funding restrictions are addressed, I’m missing it. So, basically, useless. Why is the GOP going to this, again? | Read More »
(Via Instapundit) Michael Barone unpacks the bind that House Democrats are in over the health care rationing bill, right now (to summarize, reports suggest that they really don’t want to pass the Senate version, promises of reconciliation later or no): If you vote for the Senate bill, you’re voting for something that has 35% support nationwide and probably a little less than that in your | Read More »
You have undoubtedly seen by now that Senator Dick Durbin is now ready to try to kill the filibuster, not five years after praising the practice to the skies. You are also undoubtedly not surprised. But this particular bit below from Durbin is really quite interesting as an example of defiance against the tyranny of the majority: it’s an absolute pity that the senior Senator | Read More »
I’m going to sum this entire thing up, because the sooner we move past this the happier everybody’s going to be. Republican Party* (in the person of House Republican Leader John Boehner & House Republican Whip Eric Cantor): Mr. President, you claim that you want bipartisan health care talks. Do you have the moral courage to commit to junking this existing unpopular, hyper-partisan health care | Read More »
OK, let’s walk through this. Mind you, I’ve already declared this bill dead anyway. Back in November of 2009, the House of Representatives passed a health care rationing bill, 220-215. For the purposes of this discussion, we will note four Congressman ‘yea’ votes: Abercrombie of Hawaii; Cao (R) of Louisiana; Murtha of Pennsylvania; and Wexler of Florida. In December of 2009, the Senate passes their | Read More »
Kicking and screaming all the way, to be sure. But the first tendrils of Reality Non-Unicorn are beginning to worm their way into and subvert the Online Left’s comfortable universe-consensus. Obama Suggests Possibility That Health Reform May Not Happen Maybe I’m misreading this. But if you look at the transcript of Obama’s remarks at a fundraiser last night, it seems like the President was at | Read More »
This unpopular: RICHMOND, Va. — With five Democrats defecting, the Virginia Senate today passed a Republican measure that says Virginians don’t have to buy health insurance. Voting 23-17, the Democratic-controlled Senate kicked to the House a bill by Sen. Frederick Quayle, R-Suffolk, that supporters say will send a message to Washington about its efforts to overhaul the health-care system. (Via AoSHQ Headlines) The bill should | Read More »
It was a close-run thing, folks. The nearest-run thing you ever saw. Sen. Tom Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said negotiators from the White House, Senate and House reached a final deal on healthcare reform days before Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts. Labor leaders had announced an agreement with White House and congressional representatives over an excise tax on high-cost insurance plans | Read More »
I mean, I get the central message: “Fine. You want me to cut spending? I’ll cut spending! I’ll show you! I’LL SHOW YOU ALL!” The Obama administration stunned New York’s delegation Thursday, dropping the bombshell news that it does not support funding the 9/11 health bill. The state’s two senators and 14 House members met with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just hours | Read More »
The Hill article is surprisingly garbled – I assume that they’ll clean it up this morning – but the original article (“Pryor: Health care reform may not happen this year“) is a lot clearer. The short version is that they’re back at the ‘discussion phase’ for a health care rationing bill, which is legislature-speak for “we’re going to drop the subject, and hope that you | Read More »
To quote Gandhi: First, they ignore you, Then they ridicule you, Then they fight you, THEN YOU WIN. Moe Lane PS: No. Then you win. Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Is it dead? Well, it certainly isn’t healthy: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she does not have the votes needed to pass the Senate version of the health care bill. “I don’t see the votes for it at this time,” Pelosi told reporters in a briefing. If you’re wondering why Speaker Pelosi, who currently has something like a seventy vote majority in the | Read More »
…and he just did. “I know some of my Democratic colleagues had been thinking about ways to, in effect, get around the results by working in various parliamentary ways, looking at the rules, trying to get a health care bill passed that would have been the same bill that would have passed if [MA AG] Martha Coakley [D] had won, and I think that’s a | Read More »
[UPDATE: Jove nods: I switched out Frank and Caputo. My bad, and thanks to reader jack for pointing it out. The basic point remains.] Hi, John Olver! Hi, Richard Neal! Hi, Jim McGovern! Yeah, hi, Barney Frank. [UPDATE: Excuse me, that's Barney Frank] Hi, Niki Tsongas! Hi, John F. Tierney! Hi, Ed Markey! Hi, Michael Capuano! [Michael Capuano.] Hi, Stephen Lynch! Hi, William Delahunt! …Why | Read More »
And I’m blaming the Governor for this one because I find it inconceivable that he would have let his subordinates set policy in such a nakedly partisan fashion without him first signing off on it. Apparently the Democratic party just doesn’t care how many ‘moderate’ Democrats have to have their careers sacrificed to the leadership’s ambitions. I don’t know where we’ll use this development – | Read More »
As in, why is the Democratic party blatantly breaking numerous campaign promises about openness and transparency by hiding the final negotiations over the health care rationing bill? Easy. Because you let them. Moe Lane PS: Elections have consequences, Jack Cafferty. Don’t even pretend to be outraged on my behalf: I knew that this was going to happen all along, which is why I voted for | Read More »
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