Don’t worry Jack, we will!

Most open and ethical Congress in history… Heh!

In a vote resonating with history, Senate Democrats early Christmas Eve morning passed their version of health care reform, advancing the issue further than ever before in the nation’s history and setting up a bruising stretch-run to get a final bill to President Obama next year.

“It’s about people, it’s about life and death in America. It’s a question of morality, of right and wrong,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat. “It’s about human suffering, and given the change to relieve this suffering, we must take this chance.”

The party-line 60-39 vote is the midway point for the bill. It must now be reconciled with a very different House measure. Major sticking points remain, including how to treat federal payments for abortions, whether to force insurance companies to compete with a government-run public health plan and which taxes to raise to pay for the changes.

The good news is this turkey is still has hurdle or two to clear before becoming law, the bad news is I don’t think it matters… The Democrats have invested far to much time and political capital in jamming their so called reforms through Congress. If liberals in the House have to, they will roll over and vote for the Senate bill in toto. Never mind what the White House is saying Democrats in Congress can not let this, um, debate drag into February, or worse, March… The closer they get to election day the less likely passage becomes.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer will do whatever they have to do to get health care reform through the House as quickly as possible… Even if that means bribing they’re caucus into voting for the Senate bill in toto.

Related

• What Doctors and Patients Have to Lose Under ObamaCare – Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Wall Street Journal
• A Democrat’s view from the House: Senate bill isn’t health reform – Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, CNN.com
• Surprise! Gaming CBO rules masks how healthcare reform may actually make deficit worse – James Pethokoukis, Reuters
• Senate passes Reid bill, 60-39 – Ed Morrissey, Hot Air

The House of Representatives passed Nancy Pelosi’s 1,990 page health care reform bill by a vote of 220 to 215 on Saturday night.

The House of Representatives late Saturday night approved a historic bill to remake the U.S. health-care system, delivering President Barack Obama a key procedural victory on his top domestic priority after a lengthy and sometimes emotional day of debate on the nearly 2,000-page measure.

By a vote of 220-215, lawmakers approved a 10-year, $1.055 trillion bill that aims to put in place near-universal health-care coverage in the United States, would require individuals to buy and most businesses to offer coverage, and expand Medicaid. Poorer Americans would get subsidies to buy insurance under the bill, and insurers would be barred from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

The bill would also establish a government-run health-insurance plan option to compete with private insurers — the controversial “public option” strongly backed by Obama but sharply opposed by Republicans.

Just one Republican, Rep. Joseph Cao of Louisiana, voted for the White House-backed bill. A substitute bill offered by the GOP failed on a vote of 176-258. The House Democrats’ bill will now need to be melded with a bill awaiting action in the Senate.

Obama said after the vote that the bill “will provide stability and security for Americans who have insurance; quality affordable options for those who don’t; and bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses, and the government while strengthening the financial health of Medicare. And it is legislation that is fully paid for and will reduce our long-term federal deficit.”

The president added that he is “absolutely confident” that the Senate will pass its version of the law, “and I look forward to signing comprehensive health insurance reform into law by the end of the year.”

Before the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said it was “an historic moment for our nation and for America’s families.”

House lawmakers began debating late Saturday morning and were immediately caught up in partisan fighting. But House Democratic leaders were upbeat about the bill’s prospects after an early afternoon meeting with Obama, who made a rare Saturday trip to Capitol Hill to press members to pass the measure.

That the bill passed is no surprise, that Republicans helped it pass is… The sad reality here is that if the Republican’s had shown a little political courage and voted present on the Stupak Amendment there’s a good chance the Democrats wouldn’t have been able to find enough votes in their own caucus to pass H.R. 3962, the Health Care Reform bill.

I understand why Republicans essentially had to vote for the Stupak Amendment… Abortion is an important issue to great many voters and if Republicans had voted against the Stupak Amendment they more than likely would have faced a backlash from pro-life voters. Unfortunately, is was a wasted vote, Henry Waxmen and other have pointedly said there’s “no guarantee” the Stupak Amendment will be retained in the final version of the bill.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) even said during the floor debate on the bill Saturday that he doubts the amendment will survive the conference committee.

Regardless the fight now heads to the Senate where the conventional wisdom says it will be a much tougher fight… Don’t believe it, I fully expect the Senate to pass a Health Care reform bill this year, probably without a so called Public Option, but they will pass a bill. A bill that will put us one step closer to the Democrats goal of a socialized single payer system… A system that does things like this.

Related

• ObamaCare legislation in trouble – New York Post
• Health reformers prepare for Senate hurdle – Financial Times
• Government-Run ‘Public Option’ in Pelosi Health Bill Threatens to Kill Hospitals, Says Democrat Who Voted Against the Bill – CNSNews.com
• PelosiCare could be bad news for the dollar – James Pethokoukis, Reuters

A new value-added tax (VAT) is “on the table” to help the U.S. address its fiscal liabilities, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday night.

Pelosi, appearing on PBS’s “The Charlie Rose Show” asserted that “it’s fair to look at” the VAT as part of an overhaul of the nation’s tax code.

“I would say, Put everything on the table and subject it to the scrutiny that it deserves,” Pelosi told Rose when asked if the VAT has any appeal to her.

The VAT is a tax on manufacturers at each stage of production on the amount of value an additional producer adds to a product.

Pelosi argued that the VAT would level the playing field between U.S. and foreign manufacturers, the latter of which do not have pension and healthcare costs included in the price of their goods because their governments provide those services, financed by similar taxes.

The sad reality is the Federal Government now borrows roughly 50 cents of every dollar it spends, that’s simply unsustainable over the long term… The Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress are either going to have to radically scale back their agenda (something they won’t do) or raise taxes on broad swath of Americans… Something they’re only too happy to do while saying with a straight face “the deficit made us do it.”

Make no mistake a Value Added Tax added on top of our current income tax system will be an economy killer that hits those who can least afford it the the hardest.

Let’s not forget Jimmy Carter was one of the worst Presidents in American history, his term in office was marked by a faltering economy, high unemployment, high interest rates, crippling inflation and an energy crisis… this is a man whose bumbling led to 53 American diplomats being held hostage in Iran for 444 days.

This is man how kissed a totalitarian on the cheek and pronounced American fears of Soviet Communism overblown.

This is a man who addressed the nation during an economic crisis and told us to more or less to get used to it.

If there is politically inspired violence it will be because people like former Pres. Carter and Speaker Pelosi irresponsibly throw around charges of racism. Never mind that her interpretation of the entire Moscone-Milk-White episode in San Francisco is just off the wall… As Ed Morrissey points out “Dan White was not a right-wing politician; he was a registered Democrat and considered a moderate. He assassinated Moscone after the mayor refused to reappoint him as supervisor, a post White had resigned but then regretted leaving. He shot Milk five times on the way out of City Hall after personal animosity between the two had erupted earlier over a zoning dispute.”

If there is anyone who is stoking racial and/or political anger is this country it’s Democrats who have lost the argument the on merits and who are trying to demonize those they disagree with. Let’s not forget it was Speaker Pelosi who along with America’s crazy uncle, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who called those who disagreed with their health care reform agenda un-American in a USA Today op-ed.

Madam Speaker, Mr. President, our opposition to Pres. Obama’s policies is not about race. We simply have fundamentally different vision of the role government and as Americans we have a God given, constitutionally protected right to disagree.

Related

• Dueling ‘racist’ claims defuse once powerful word – Associated Press

A top White House adviser said Tuesday he doubts two Senate Republicans at the center of health-care talks are negotiating seriously, as Democrats adopted a new, more confrontational tone accusing key Republicans of blocking change.

Senior adviser David Axelrod, responding to recent broadsides against Democratic health plans by Republican Sens. Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said Democrats would reach out to other Republicans to finish a deal this year. He added that President Barack Obama is considering laying out a more detailed vision of what he wants in a health-overhaul plan.

Democrats are shaping a strategy in response to the public pounding they took over the summer from some voters angry about proposed health-care changes. They are also responding to the troubles of the Senate Finance Committee, the only panel in Congress seeking a bipartisan bill.

Lets not bullshit each other Democrats aren’t interested in a bipartisan bill… if they were they would have incorporated at least a few ideas from any of the three (3) alternative health care reform proposals offered by Republicans into the bills current before Congress. The simple truth is Democrats are trying blame Republicans to cover their own leadership failures. Democrats have filibuster proof 60 majority in the Senate and 256 to 178 seat Majority in the House of Representatives… They have the vote to pass health care reform without a single Republican vote. The fact that they can’t get it done has more to do with the unwillingness of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to work with moderates within their own caucus than Republican objections.

Bottom line, regardless of what David Axelrod claims, Republican don’t have the votes to stop health care reform, it’s  the failure of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to rally their own troops that is derailing the presidents agenda.

CIA Director Leon Panetta’s emergency testimony to Congress about an illegal assassination program has set off a crisis at the spy agency. The Daily Beast’s Joseph Finder exclusively reports that:

• The secret assassination ‘program’ wasn’t much more than a PowerPoint presentation, a task force and a collection of schemes—it never got off the ground
• Panetta’s three immediate predecessors—George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden—have spoken to him, and that he now sees that no laws were broken.
• Panetta has frantically tried to rectify his gaffe, but now faces increased Congressional oversight.

CIA Director Leon Panetta stunned Washington earlier this summer by disclosing, in an emergency closed-door briefing to Congress, that for the last eight years, the agency he now runs illegally concealed a secret terrorist-assassination program. The reaction was predictably explosive. The House intelligence-oversight committee launched a major investigation. Here was official confirmation, from the very top, that the CIA in the Bush years had been flagrantly and systematically violating the National Security Act of 1947.

But according to a half-dozen sources, including several very senior, recently retired CIA officials, clandestine-service officers, and Cabinet-level officials from the Bush administration, the real story is at once more innocent—Panetta was mistaken; no law was broken—and far more troubling: an inexperienced CIA director, unfamiliar with how his vast, complicated agency works, unable to trust senior officials within his own agency, and desperate to keep his hands clean, screwed up.

The only question is whether Panetta is an idiot who is unqualified to lead the CIA or a political hack who fabricated a secret, illegal spy program to cover Speaker Pelosi’s backside.

H/T: Gabriel Malor at AoSHQ.

Related

• Panetta Revealed – Commentary

Rep. Massa met with an intimate group of Netroots activists during their annual Netroots Nation gathering in Pittsburgh this past weekend reiterated his support and promised the he would  “… vote adamantly against the interests of my district if I actually think what I am doing is going to be helpful.” In a broad sense I don’t have a problem with that, politicians aren’t supposedly to be automatons who blindly follow public opinion. George W. Bush, for example, ignored broad public opposition to order implementation of the surge strategy in Iraq. And it appears he was right to do so.

The problem here is that when you take Rep. Massa’s remarks in context with remarks by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid calling opponents of health care reform “un-American” and/or an “Evil mob” you’re left with a very frightening impression… You’re left with the impression that our elected leaders have forgotten that they were elected to represent we the people, you are left with the impression that they have forgotten they are our  representatives  not are rulers.

Thomas Jefferson said “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” We have come to a point were a broad swath of Americans have lost faith in their government… Remarks like those of Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and Rep. Massa’s only serve to reinforce the belief that our elected leaders no longer respect we the people, and instead consider us a bunch of ignorant rubes who need to be told to shut up and stand quietly by while their betters rule the nation.

Well it’s a strange old game – you learn it slow
one step forward and it’s back to go
you’re standing on the throttle
you’re standing on the breaks
in the groove ’til you make a mistake

sometimes you’re the windshield
sometimes you’re the bug
sometimes it all comes together baby
sometimes you’re a fool in love
sometimes you’re the louisville slugger
sometimes you’re the ball
sometimes it all comes together baby
sometimes you’re going to lose it all…

Right now suspect a lot democrats are feeling a lot like the proverbial bug as they face their constituents at town hall meetings. People have strong feelings about health care reform and the debate is passionate to say the least.

Anyway, I’ve been tied up with various projects over the last couple of days don’t have a lot of spare time for writing but I hate to leave this page quite for two long so I though I’d pass on few must reads about the health care reform.

First is Dr. Melissa Clouthier’s excellent piece at Pajamas Media about former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s attempt to frame the health care reform debate in philosophical terms all Americans can understand:

Once again, Sarah Palin brings the essence of a disputed policy into sharp focus. With dramatic flourish she illustrated average Americans’ concerns with her own in a post on her Facebook fan page. She said:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Health care by definition involves life and death decisions. Human rights and human dignity must be at the center of any health care discussion.

The bolded sentence caused an outcry on the left, but also among Republicans trying to take a measured tone. Ezra Klein interviewed Sen. Johnny Isakson and asked:

How did this become a question of euthanasia?

I have no idea. I understand — and you have to check this out — I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin’s web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You’re putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don’t know how that got so mixed up.

Now wait just a minute. Talk about conflating the debate or, more likely, being willfully obtuse. Sarah Palin rightfully notes at the end that a government involved with health care issues will be involved in life and death decisions.

Since the goal of government-run health care is to insure everyone while simultaneously holding down costs (an outrageous goal on its face), decisions will have to be made. Those decisions will be made by the ones paying the bills — the government bureaucratic panel of political appointees. This is already happening in Oregon where there is a public option health care system.

The majority of health care expenses occur at the end of life. Right now, doctors and family members struggle with the ethical decisions individually. A way to cut costs would be to make central decisions — a “death panel,” if you will. How will the decisions be made? Well, political advocacy groups with the most power will push the panel to make certain choices. There will be bias. But mostly, there will be political correctness and bottom-line decision making by a very small group of people.

The philosophical questions Gov. Palin raises are ones that are very close to my heart… I lost my Father a few months ago and my family had to make the difficult choices of how best to care for him during his last days. We made those decisions in consultation with his doctors… The idea that a government bureaucrat could decide to deny treatment, based on on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society” is offensive. It is antithetical to the American ideal.

Second is Camille Paglia Salon.com column. I disagree with Paglia on most everything but her column today is one that everyone should read:

I must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll? I was glad to see the White House counsel booted, as well as Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, and hope it’s a harbinger of things to come. Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.

Case in point: the administration’s grotesque mishandling of healthcare reform, one of the most vital issues facing the nation. Ever since Hillary Clinton’s megalomaniacal annihilation of our last best chance at reform in 1993 (all of which was suppressed by the mainstream media when she was running for president), Democrats have been longing for that happy day when this issue would once again be front and center.

But who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises — or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.

The problem is that Barack Obama is neither sober nor deliberative he is inexperienced and indecisive and has so far has failed to take a leadership role in the debate. The White house can’t sell health care reform because it’s not their plan… It’s Congresses plan and it’s turd.

Health care reform is supposed to be Barack Obama’s signature issue but he’s left the heavy lifting of crafting the plan up to people like Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman.

Last is is the Wall Street Journal’s The Truth About Health Insurance editorial which explains some of the intricacies of the modern insurance market:

The White House is priming the defibrillator paddles to revive ObamaCare, and its new strategy is to talk about “health-insurance reform,” rather than “health-care reform.” The point is to make its proposals seem less radical than they are, while portraying private insurers as villains for supposedly denying coverage to the sick.

Sounds like a good time to explain a few facts about the modern insurance market. Start with the reality that nine out of 10 people under 65 are covered by their employers, most of which cover all employees and charge everyone the same rate. President Obama’s horror stories are about the individual insurance market, where some 15 million people buy coverage outside of the workplace.

Mr. Obama does have a point about insurance security. If you develop an expensive condition such as cancer or heart disease, and then get fired or divorced or your employer goes out of business—then individual insurance is going to be very expensive if it’s available. But what the President and Democrats won’t tell you is that these problems are the result mainly of government intervention.

Because the tax code subsidizes private insurance only when it is sponsored by an employer, the individual market is relatively small and its turnover rate is very high. Most policyholders are enrolled for fewer than 24 months as they move between jobs, making it difficult for insurers to maintain large risk pools to spread costs.

Mr. Obama wants to wave away this reality with new regulations that prohibit “discrimination against the sick”—specifically, by forcing insurers to cover anyone at any time and at nearly uniform rates. But if insurers are forced to sell coverage to everyone at any time, many people will buy insurance only when they need medical care. This raises the cost of insurance for everyone else, in particular those who are responsible enough to buy insurance before they need it; they end up paying even higher premiums. And the more expensive the insurance, the less likely people will buy it before they need it.

While your there you may also want to take the time to read Arthur Laffer’s Op Ed on “How to Fix the Health-Care ‘Wedge’” and and Dorothy Rabinowitz’s Op Ed on “Obama’s Tone-Deaf Health Campaign“.