Healthcare tanking

[ISASO]

The Dems are blindly pushing forward.
America rejects it more every day.
Support for this healthcare bill is lower than when Bill and Hillary pushed it.
Obama's personal popularity sinks more with every poll that's taken.
Dem. Senator Dick Durbin admits he doesn't know what's in the bill.

When will sanity step in and rescue our future?

[Maggie]

The health overhaul debate is no longer about policy; it’s all politics now. It has been for a while now.

Democrats will pay a steep price for this in 2010; however, I don’t think most of them care. Progressives naturally assume that they, exclusively, know what is best for the public. This has been a goal of theirs since Wilson/FDR and, based on their actions, they believe this will be their last chance to move toward this type of radical reform. And they are probably right. The choices facing the Democratic Party, in terms of losses – damage to the Party, are bad and worse. They have backed themselves into a corner and perhaps that was the goal of the leadership all along.

They may get this done and at this point I would put the odds at 60-40 - in favor of "something" passing. But with vulnerable senators being reminded back home how unpopular this bill really is, it’s still not a sure thing. There is a lot more wrong with this bill than whether it contains a public option or a Medicare expansion. Centralized control is built into the fabric of the legislation. The American people understand that, which is why its unpopularity grows by the day.

[ISASO]

The desperation to capitalize on the liberal one-party rule is fully evident when you hear that the Senate might be voting on Christmas Day.
The ultimate irony will happen when, because they have to stay around DC that day, they will first violate their oath by approving the bill and then we'll pay for all of them to have red-carpet, private jet service back home.

[Maggie]

It is fascinating to watch. At least I am fascinated – by the politics.

[ISASO]

The most fascinating part is how there is such a rush...24 hour sessions, voting on Christmas Day, etc.

If this has been the obvious and morally right thing to do for the past 70 years, why are they trying to rush it through and being very sneaky about it along the way?

That alone makes this whole fiasco wrong.

[Maggie]

What is intriguing is that Reid is pushing the Senate to vote for cloture and to pass a health-care bill by Christmas, but still apparently doesn't know what exactly the bill is. We are a week away, from this new self-imposed “deadline” (remember his was to be done by August) and still - no bill, no CBO score, no 60. I don’t care what an individual’s political leaning might be – anyone with a couple of brain cells will recognize what the Senate is doing is insane. :wacko:

Not only do these clowns not read what they vote on but want to vote on something that technically doesn’t exist. :blink: As I wrote before – this is all politics now. The substance of the bill is no longer relevant. Reid needs 60 to invoke cloture, then he knows he only needs 51 to pass. Period.

Q.E.D.

[ISASO]

At this point it's all about not damaging His Majesty's PR status as the magical, mystical, post-racial, post-partisan, transformational and transcendant President he was advertised to be. Of course, they are walking the plank for George Soros and a President who's own poll numbers are about to augur into the terra firma at Mach 1.

[Maggie]

The Health Care Bill Is Political Suicide

[Ixiah]

Obama recently did a complete 180 by opposing the Dorgan amendment allowing import of prescription drugs from Canada.

The Obama administration opposed the Dorgan amendment in a deal with the pharmaceutical industry—gauranteeing that the industry wouldn’t oppose health care reform.

Candidate Obama, however, said he supported importation on the trail last year.

http://publicola.net/?p=21027

[ISASO]

Candidate Obama and President Obama are two entirely different people.

[Maggie]

As expected, a straight party line vote taken at 1a.m. this morning (60-40) to end debate in the Senate.

But with NYC covered with snow and Christmas almost here, I prefer to count our blessings. Among the sweetest of those is this: We live in a free country, in which the government is beholden to the people, who alone are the Sovereign power. We hold elections, we choose who will represent us, and we ultimately decide what laws will be passed - or repealed. Those who would compromise our liberty by un-tethering the government from its proper limits, and allowing it to control whole swaths of our society, would do well to remember that they cannot similarly deny us the liberty of voting them out of office.

[WuDrWu]

I don't know if this is a fair comparison, but if there was a bill banning abortion, and the Republicans needed 1 more vote to seal the deal, and Sam Brownback was that vote, and he held out for a few $100,000,000 federal dollars for farmers to get his vote, I'd vote him out of office so fast it wouldn't be funny and I'd be embarrassed he represented my state.

I hope other states are equally ashamed.

This buying of votes, on BOTH sides, has to end.

[Maggie]

Change Nobody Believes In - A bill so reckless that it has to be rammed through on a partisan vote on Christmas eve

And tidings of comfort and joy from Harry Reid too. The Senate Majority Leader has decided that the last few days before Christmas are the opportune moment for a narrow majority of Democrats to stuff ObamaCare through the Senate to meet an arbitrary White House deadline. Barring some extraordinary reversal, it now seems as if they have the 60 votes they need to jump off this cliff, with one-seventh of the economy in tow.

Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday morning Mr. Reid threw out the 2,100-page bill that the world's greatest deliberative body spent just 17 days debating and replaced it with a new "manager's amendment" that was stapled together in covert partisan negotiations. Democrats are barely even bothering to pretend to care what's in it, not that any Senator had the chance to digest it in the 38 hours before the first cloture vote at 1 a.m. this morning. After procedural motions that allow for no amendments, the final vote could come at 9 p.m. on December 24.

Even in World War I there was a Christmas truce.

The rushed, secretive way that a bill this destructive and unpopular is being forced on the country shows that "reform" has devolved into the raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state. An increasing roll of leaders in health care and business are looking on aghast at a bill that is so large and convoluted that no one can truly understand it, as Finance Chairman Max Baucus admitted on the floor last week. The only goal is to ram it into law while the political window is still open, and clean up the mess later.

I think Santa has lost your wish list Doc.

[ISASO]

It is disgusting and treasonous the way in which Obama, his administration and the Democrats have abused their oath and the American religious holiday of Christmas, ramming this bill through while most are distracted by the celebration of the birth of our Savior.

And no, I don't mean our Savior Obama.

[WuDrWu]

Do you think the average American understands that taxes will be collected to pay for this for 10 years, and that benefits will be paid out for only 6-7 of those years, for the most part?


Or that this entitlement program, if left alone in 10 short years, will hemorrhage taxpayer funds every year at the pace of around three hundred BILLION every ten years, assuming there aren't any unforeseen changes (and we all know there will be). Count on this program being AT LEAST a half a TRILLION dollars in the hole in the first 20 years with absolutely no end in sight. I say this with nary a mention of certain poorer service, longer waits and diminished discoveries.