Posted on 03/08/2010 6:53:40 AM PST by milwguy
Last week President Obama sanctioned "reconciliation," a complex tactic that would jam ObamaCare into law on sheer power politics. But what if this gambit is really a false-flag operation, meant to lure House Democrats into voting for a bill that they would otherwise oppose? That's the question many rank-and-file Members are now asking themselves, and they're right to be worried.
The cleanest option for Democrats would be the House passing the Senate's Christmas Eve bill word for word, thereby bypassing a Senate filibuster under the normal rules and forwarding ObamaCare directly to the Rose Garden signing ceremony. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said the votes simply don't exist for the Senate bill as is.
Liberals don't think the middle-class insurance subsidies are large enough. Big Labor hates the "Cadillac tax" on high-cost health coverage because extremely generous benefits typically come out of collective bargaining. The pro-life Democrats led by Michigan's Bart Stupak can't abide federal funding for abortion. Everyone detests the enveloping corruption, such as the Nebraska Medicaid bribe for Ben Nelson, which has become so politically toxic that the opponents now include Ben Nelson.
Mrs. Pelosi can't rope in the 216 votes she needs without an iron-clad promise of another round of Senate action.
Iron-clad promise—or double-cross? After all, the White House would much prefer the Senate bill, because by its lights the cost-control programs are tougher than what the House prefers. And from a political perspective, a bill that can be signed immediately and that the press will portray as an historic achievement is far better than the drawn-out and gory battle that would be reconciliation. Republican Senators will have many procedural knives at their disposal, and the process will force Democrats to cast further votes and spend more months debating a deeply unpopular bill.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The question is this: Is it too late for the “dupes” to wake up?
The standard ‘rat Washington mantra: “We’ll double-cross that bridge when we come to it.”
It looks like the House Democrats are finally waking up. They need to realize that their party has been hijacked.
Shouldn’t Ted Kennedy be credited for that line?
I don't think so. But it took awhile for us here at FR to figure this out. I would say that the turning point on FR was early last week when it became pretty universally recognized that the Reconciliation Scheme was just a scam to get the House votes that Pelosi needs. One would assume that members of Congress would have figured this out at least as fast as we did.
OTOH, Charles Krauthammer recently predicted that the Senate Bill would pass the House but fail in the Senate. Now that was a very, very major faux pas for Charles K. He looked the complete dumbo. I'm assuming that he has figured this out by now but who knows. In any case this proves to me that the whole Reconciliation Red Herring/Scam has been quite effective.
Think about it. In the United States of America today, we are openly discussing whether elected members of Congress, including those of his own party, can trust the President to fulfill a promise he solemnly declared on national television, in prepared remarks, with the backdrop of the White House, Oval Office and all our history adorning him, before the world, and to the American people.
Just damn.
More needs to be said about how Reid flagrantly double-crossed Jim Bunning to get Bunning to lift his hold because Congress was violating the Pay Go law they’d just passed.
Rush, Sean, Glenn, et al. — please go over the excruciating facts of the Bunning double-cross! This is exactly what awaits ALL HOUSE RATS at the hands of Dingy Harry & Obambi.
When is somebody going to finally have the guts to stand behind Obama at one of these televised speeches and make funny faces or shoot him the bird when he tells yet another obvious lie? Are there that many Obamabots out there that he has a constant supply of brain-dead drones to stand behind him?
One white-coated doctor, standing behind him shouting “bullshit!” would end this whole thing in an instant.
My understanding of all past reconciliations is they occurred prior to the President's signature. Once the bill is signed it becomes law and only an entirely new legislative process can be initiated to either amend or repeal it.
To a certain extent they have. Look at Obama's poll numbers. The issue now is the legacy Congress. Until they are voted out, they can do what they like.
Rush said the same thing. “opentalk” posted it a few days ago.
There Won’t Be Reconciliation or Easy Path to Repealing Obamacare
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2465934/posts
“All of this talk of reconciliation is just another head feint. All this talk of getting the Senate bill passed in the House and then back to the Senate for reconciliation where all the things the House wants get added in, the second bill, a third bill, not going to happen. The point is it was never the intention.”
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