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Senator Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) has caved in to pressure from Democrats in their proposed government takeover of the health care industry, settling for language that allows use of federal taxpayer dollars to fund abortion. But was the abortion issue the reason he objected to the bill at all? Now that he’s caved on the language and will vote to allow federal funding of abortion, people are left to wonder. The House-passed bill includes language that would repeal the McCarran-Ferguson Act which exempts insurance companies from federal anti-trust legislation, which facilitates insurance company monopolies within each state. Yesterday afternoon, the insurance...

Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is headed to Nebraska. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, will headline an Omaha rally Sunday afternoon to try to persuade U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson to change his mind on health care reform. The rally will be at 3 p.m. at the Civic Auditorium Music Hall, 17th Street and Capitol Avenue. Doors will open at 2 p.m. The rally was put together quickly Saturday after Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, said he would support a health-care reform bill in the Senate. Republican U.S. Rep. Lee Terry of Omaha is expected to attend, as well as state...

Updated December 18, 2009Democratic Holdout Controls Fate of Senate Health Care Bill FOXNews.com Saturday: Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska is a Democratic moderate who voted to begin debate on health care legislation. (AP Photo) As Democrats race against the clock to pass a sweeping health care bill before Christmas, Sen. Ben Nelson, the only known Democratic holdout, has positioned himself to play Santa or the Grinch.The Nebraska Democrat is pushing to include air-tight restrictions on abortion funding in the bill, but that's not all he wants.Because of the $465 billion in Medicare cuts included in the Senate bill, Nelson wants...

The Senate is heading toward a Christmas Eve vote to pass landmark healthcare legislation, but instead of holiday cheer, Democrats and Republicans are digging in for trench warfare. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is determined to finish work before the Christmas holiday and has set a schedule that would end with a final vote on the evening of Dec. 24. “We’re going to finish this healthcare bill before we leave here for the holidays,” Reid declared on the floor Thursday. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has told colleagues that he will not give any ground on procedural...

WASHINGTON — Don’t touch that C-SPAN dial. The Senate is planning a midnight session tonight as Democrats and Republicans fight fire with fire over health care reform. Tonight’s session is not even about health care but rather the annual Department of Defense spending bill. Senators have a 1 a.m. vote on the Pentagon bill. But with just one week to go before the Christmas deadline on health care, neither side is making this easy. Democrats have little room to spare as the health bill must go through a series of potentially time-consuming procedural votes in coming days if Senate Majority...

Nancy Pelosi: "Thank God" Senate Bill Funds Abortions Washington, DC -- In yet another comment that will draw guffaws from pro-life advocates, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is thankful to God that the Senate bill include massive abortion funding. Pelosi also claims she has enough votes to pass a pro-abortion health care bill in the House, though that is disputed. http://www.LifeNews.com/nat5781.html

n a conference call with Pennsylvania reporters Saturday, Specter compared the passage of the health care bill to the Civil Rights Act. He said tough legislative achievements take considerable time. "The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was necessary, although it did not go as far as people would have liked then, to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Again, it did not go as far as people would have liked, but we did find the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We have to find times when we have to build incrementally on these matters,'' Specter said. ~snip~ pecter said...

The Senate clerk has finished reading the text of the manager's amendment to the chamber's healthcare bill. After roughly seven and a half hours of reading, the clerk concluded reading the 383-page manager's amendment to the bill, which was submitted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) earlier today. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) forced a reading of the amendment earlier today in a bid to string along the Senate healthcare debate. In the interim, Senate Democrats announced an agreement with Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) to secure the necessary 60 votes to move forward with the bill. They also released...

Video: "Now - for the first time - there is a clear majority in the Senate that's willing to stand up to the insurance lobby and embrace lasting health insurance reforms that have eluded us for generations. Let's bring this long and vigorous debate to an end." Oooooooobama! A CLEAR MAJORITY!!! A clear manufactured, arm-twisted majority at best!

There was an air of unreality in the United States Senate when I entered the Capitol building on Wednesday to record some PJTV interviews. I sat down with five U.S. senators to discuss the imminent future of the long-embattled health care bill. We are approaching the eleventh hour for Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-NV) slowly dying health care legislation, which he insists will be passed before Christmas. This is the same bill that was to be enacted last summer, then by August, then after Labor Day, and then before Thanksgiving. Now it may be a Christmas present for the country. The...

Here is video of GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell calling the Democrats' Senate Health Care Bill a "legislative train wreck." McConnell was reacting to news that Democrats now have the 60 votes to invoke cloture and move to a vote on final passage on the bill. They hope to do so on Christmas Eve. McConnell said the bill will lead to higher taxes, and that it includes "permissive language" on government-funded abortions. He said the bill will cut back on Medicare, Medicaid, and Hospice funding. McConnell pointed out that the bill now contains a special deal for Medicaid funding...

Ben Nelson says that he knows who started the rumor, and that it may be embarrassing if/when that info comes out. Says, no one threatened him or offered him ANYTHING for his vote. He's says the abortion issue is not the only thing stopping him from supporting the Senate bill.

Quite an explosive leak! I wonder how this will affect things? It is certainly a thuggish and dangerous thing for Obama to play with National Security over this craptacular idea of socialized medicine. Quite a desperate move. According to a Senate aide, the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base on the BRAC list if Nelson doesn’t fall into line. Offutt Air Force Base employs some 10,000 military and federal employees in Southeastern Nebraska. As our source put it, this is a “naked effort by Rahm Emanuel and the White House to extort Nelson’s vote.”...

NTERACTIVE GRAPHIC Health-Care Reform: How The Bills Stack Up Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unveiled a revised health-care bill Dec. 19 that includes concessions on abortion and other issues needed to secure a 60-vote Democratic majority to overcome a Republican filibuster. The Senate is expected to vote Christmas eve.

I'm sure you've all heard this one before, but really this must be the battle cry for the next 3 years. 2010 will be a democrat massacre now that passage of the abomination is all but guaranteed, but it will not be enough because we will not have the numbers to override Zero's veto. Hence, it will again be the battle of cry of Sarah Palin's presidential campaign. Wonder how long it will take for the first lawsuits to start going through the courts on this bill. Insurance companies can probably start suing very soon. Taxpayer standing to bring suit...

Senate Democratic leaders say last-minute changes to the health care bill include giving nonprofit health insurance companies an exemption from the excise tax on insurers, a revision pushed by Sen. Carl Levin, who is a major recipient of campaign contributions form mega nonprofit Blue Cross Blue Shield. The excise tax or fee on health insurance companies was expected to bring in $6.7 billion to help pay for the nearly $1 trillion bill, but the complete exemption for nonprofits sought by Mr. Levin, Michigan Democrat, would cut the revenue in half. "The health insurance fee proposal in the pending Senate bill...

WASHINGTON – Congressional budget scorekeepers say the latest Democratic health care bill would cover 94 percent of eligible Americans while reducing the federal deficit. The Congressional Budget Office said Saturday the changes announced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would cut the deficit by an additional $2 billion, bringing the 10-year total reduction to $132 billion.

This bill can't be read and digested in two days. Call Congress to demand we get 3 days to read the bill.

With the clock ticking toward a self-imposed Christmas deadline, Senate Democrats scrambled on Friday to win over a potential defector and line up the 60 votes needed to pass a broad healthcare overhaul.Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and others spent hours negotiating with wayward Democratic Senator Ben Nelson, an abortion rights opponent who refuses to pledge his support until he gains stronger restrictions on the use of federal funds to pay for abortions.

Abortion Deal In Sight In Senate Healthcare Negotiations Barbara Boxer is 'optimistic' about reaching 60 votes after all-day talks with Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic holdout Ben Nelson. The GOP redoubles threats to slow business to a crawl. By Janet Hook and Noam N. Levey December 18, 2009 Reporting from Washington - With a critical vote looming this weekend, Senate Democratic negotiators closed in Friday night on a deal to persuade a lone Democratic holdout -- Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson -- to back the party's healthcare bill after a marathon day of negotiations. That would give Democrats the 60...

CBO: Senate health bill costs $871 billion By Michael O'Brien - 12/19/09 12:00 PM ET The Senate's healthcare bill would cost $871 billion and cover 31 million more Americans, according to the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the bill. The CBO said that the final legislation, unveiled Saturday by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, would cost $871 billion over the next 10 years and reduce the deficit by $132 billion over the same period. That's more than the first Senate bill had cost. Roughly 31 million Americans would receive new coverage under the legislation. The final Senate bill will cost...

Senate Republicans blasted the chamber's new healthcare bill in no uncertain terms on Saturday. "Make no mistake, this bill will reshape our nation and our lives," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement. "This bill is a legislative trainwreck of historic proportions." McConnell's Democratic counterpart, Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), unveiled the final language for his party's healthcare bill while simultaneously sewing up the 60th vote for the bill in Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). "The history that's being made here is the ignoring of the will of the American people," McConnell said. Other Republican lawmakers dumped on...

National Organization for Women opposes Senate health bill By Michael O'Brien - 12/19/09 01:55 PM ET A leading women's group called on senators on Saturday to defeat its healthcare reform bill. The leader of the National Organization for Women (NOW) excoriated the language in the health bill curtailing federal support for insurance plan covering abortions, which was inserted to win the 60th vote of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). "The so-called health care reform bill now before the Senate, with the addition of Majority Leader Harry Reid's Manager's Amendment, amounts to a health insurance bill for half the population and a...

Democrats felt the heat Saturday -- from some liberal groups on one side and Republican lawmakers on the other -- over a deal struck in the Senate to secure enough votes to pass a health care overhaul pushed by President Obama. The Senate's Republican leader called the bill a "train wreck of historic proportions," while liberal groups stepped up their complaints that Democrats gave up to much ground to court the last remaining party holdout. Obama, however, praised the compromise, saying it put the United States "on the cusp" of reforming the health care system, a goal that has eluded...

Surprise.... Surprise... a new low? I think so.

An aide to Rep. Bart Stupak (D. Mich.) coordinated opposition to a Senate compromise on the place of abortion in health care legislation this morning with the Republican Senate leadership, the Conference Catholic Bishops, and other anti-abortion groups, according to a chain of frantic emails obtained this morning by POLITICO. Stupak, in an interview with POLITICO, called the Senate’s bill’s abortion position unacceptable – but disavowed his staffer’s collaboration with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Supposedly he’s in Connecticut for the Jewish sabbath, but come on. We all know he’s in Barbados. Laughing his ass off. Already, they’ve wheeled in the cots for members and staff who choose to slumber party the night away in the Capitol, or Senate offices. But tomorrow, bright and early, all of them could need to be on hand for procedural reasons. For instance, Democrats expect to have to waive a budget point of order they expect Republicans to raise against the defense appropriations bill. That requires 60 votes… “After being assured by Democratic and Republican leaders that his vote...

We must keep fighting this. Keep calling, emailing, faxing your senator, the vote is scheduled for Monday at 1am

18 states allow for recall votes on US Senators. The 18 states allowing for recall are as follows: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin. The Senate oath of office is: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well...

Patriots, "Telephone Tea Party #2" starts NOW!!! Storm congress by phone by calling your Senators at (202) 224-3121 and telling them to "Kill the Pelosi/Reid/Obamacare Bill." Let's bury congress with calls and protest the bill. CALL NOW, CALL EARLY, CALL OFTEN. LET YOUR VOICES BE HEARD. Rise up, call NOW!

Holy craptards. McConnell is having Reid's amendment read out loud. Does this mean that Colburn and DeMint will get the whole bill read out loud? If the R's do this, I'll be impressed. I never thought they had the balls.

UPDATE: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just filed for cloture on the motion to proceed to debate on his health care bill. That pretty much seals it. Unless conservative Democrats take a very public stand by voting "no," the bill unveiled yesterday will be the bill the Senate hashes out on the floor.

WASHINGTON -- The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of right-to-life organizations in all 50 states, strongly opposes the abortion language contained in the "manager's amendment" filed today by U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nv.). Reid intends to press for Senate approval of the language during the days immediately ahead, without allowing an opportunity for any revisions to be considered. The following statement may be attributed to NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson: "The manager’s amendment is light years removed from the Stupak-Pitts Amendment that was approved by the House of Representatives on November 8 by a bipartisan...

  An aide to Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) coordinated opposition to the Senate health bill’s abortion compromise this morning with the Republican Senate leadership, according to a chain of frantic emails obtained this morning by POLITICO. Stupak, in an interview with POLITICO, called the Senate bill’s abortion position "unacceptable" – but disavowed his staffer’s collaboration with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “I never talked to McConnell about the health care bill,” said Stupak, adding that “I did not authorize the email [which] “was sent without my knowledge.”  Stupak said that he has discussed the Senate’s abortion position with Democratic senators Ben...

In Congress’s upper chamber, a Virginia fox may be the one to deliver the knock-out uppercut to Obamacare. Quiet, cunning, and independent, Sen. Jim Webb (D., Va.) has been on the sidelines for much of the Senate’s health-care debate. Instead of ranting, like Bernie Sanders, Webb has been mulling legislative language in his office for weeks. Neighboring Senate staffers whisper that Team Webb is having a real tough time shuffling the senator out of the office to make appearances on the glad-handing circuit. It seems the man just wants to sit, study, read, and think — strange priorities in the...

Let's face it FRiends, if the unconstitutional healthcare bill passes, the socialist coup d'etat will have advanced well beyond the point of no return! There is nothing in the constitution that authorizes this illegal federal power-grab and plenty that forbids it. If the Obama/Reid/Pelosi Marxist attempted coup pulls this off without the people resisting to the hilt, then they'll have no restrictions whatsoever on implementing the rest of their Liberty killing Marxist agenda. America will be no more. The whole idea of our constitution is to severely restrict the federal government to only its dozen and a half expressly listed...

But this wouldn’t be Congress’s first historic mistake. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 to “buy American” sounded like a good way to protect jobs by keeping out cheaper foreign products. Historians agree it was a mistake, setting off waves of retaliatory tariffs and making the Great Depression worse.

A leading women's group called on senators on Saturday to defeat its healthcare reform bill. The leader of the National Organization for Women (NOW) excoriated the language in the health bill curtailing federal support for insurance plan covering abortions, which was inserted to win the 60th vote of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). "The so-called health care reform bill now before the Senate, with the addition of Majority Leader Harry Reid's Manager's Amendment, amounts to a health insurance bill for half the population and a sweeping anti-abortion law for the rest of us," NOW President Terry O'Neill said in a statement.

Proposed changes to the U.S. Senate's pending healthcare reform bill include measures targeting industry profits and taxes, and a move to ensure health insurers spend a certain amount on medical care, according to a document released on Saturday. The changes, proposed as a group of amendments, must be approved by the Senate before they can be added to the massive legislation that lawmakers are struggling to finish before Christmas despite delaying tactics by Republicans and a severe snowstorm in the nation's capital. Democrats appear to have pulled together the 60 votes needed to pass a final bill. The taxes are...

Only a day after Senate Democrats voted to move into a historic debate on overhauling the nation's healthcare system, key centrists made it clearthat the party is still a long way from delivering on its promise to provide near-universal insurance coverage and contain medical costs. Faced with the prospect of Republican filibusters, Democratic leaders must deliver the same kind of total unity they managed to achieve in Saturday's vote to begin debate: Every Democratic senator, plus two independents who caucus with them, supported the key procedural motion. But several of those senators spoke out today to say that they will...

Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson dropped his anti-abortion amendment into the Senate health care debate this afternoon, essentially lifting the language from the House version that so angered the left. Nelson, a staunch pro-life advocate, partnered with fellow Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and several Republicans to offer the measure, saying it’s necessary to ensure no federal dollars are spent on elective abortions. “Most Americans, even some who support abortion, do not want taxpayer money to be used for abortions,” Nelson said in his floor speech. “We should not break with precedent on this bill.” Nelson said the amendment would bar women...

Senate Defeats Nelson Amendment to Stop Abortion Funding in Health Care Washington, DC -- The Senate on Tuesday voted 54-45 to defeat the Nelson amendment that would have removed the massive abortion funding from the Senate government-run health care bill. With the defeat, pro-life advocates will unite behind a concerted effort to defeat the entire health care bill. http://www.lifenews.com/nat5748.html

The White House meeting Tuesday between President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats has raised expectations that they have nailed down 60 votes for the health care bill. But as he prepared to leave for the White House with other senators, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) told POLITICO the deal wasn't done.

As the Senate health care debate enters crunch time, the pressure from all sides continued to grow today, with Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., right in the middle. His spokesman quickly dismissed a report by conservative columnist Michelle Malkin that Nelson was even being threatened with “closure of an air force base,” presumably Offutt Air Force Base, which is south of Omaha and home of U.S. Strategic Command. Malkin also said Nelson has been promised a “bribe bigger than Sen. Landrieu's.” That's a reference to Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat and one of the last holdouts on the vote to...

Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., and 19 other GOP senators today called for a hearing into reports that the Obama administration used the future of Offutt Air Force Base as bargaining chip in the health care debate, according to a press release by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., has flatly denied that Offutt came up in connection with the health care bill or any other piece of legislation. The White House also has described those reports as "absurd." The group of Republican senators called for a hearing in a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin,...

Here is video of Michael Goldfarb, of The Weekly Standard, talking with Glenn Beck yesterday about a source who told him that President Obama's team has threatened Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska to get him to support the Senate Health Care Bill. Goldfarb said a source told him they threatened to put Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska on the Base closing review list if Nelson does not support ObamaCare. Twenty GOP Senators are now reportedly calling for an investigation into the threat. Goldfarb says it is not a credible threat, and shows the White House does not even...

Here is a video report from CBS News this morning which says that the fate of the Senate Health Care Bill is now down to one vote - Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. According to sources, Democrats are "negotiating furiously" with Nelson to get his vote. Democrats want a vote on the Bill before Christmas, which would mean they have to file for a final vote on the bill by this Saturday - December 19. . . . (VIDEO)

WASHINGTON — The White House and Senate Democratic leaders seem willing to give Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, just about anything he wants to win his support of major health care legislation. Anything, that is, but the item at the top of Mr. Nelson’s wish-list: air-tight restrictions on insurance coverage for abortions. The bid to win Mr. Nelson’s support has become a race against the clock. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, has developed plans for a series of votes beginning at 1 a.m. Monday and round-the-clock Senate sessions intended to meet his deadline of completing the...

A year in the making, sweeping health-care legislation backed by President Barack Obama hung in the balance yesterday as conservative Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson withheld his vote in pursuit of stricter abortion limits. “Without modifications, the language concerning abortion is not sufficient,” Nelson declared in a statement that summarized the results of days of negotiations. With the support of the second-term Nebraskan, the White House and Senate Democrats would command 60 votes for the health care measure, enough to overcome a GOP filibuster and pass the bill within a matter of days. Without it, the prospects are far more uncertain....

Here are the election results for the past 5 elections on how the State of Nebraska votes for President, this is what Ben Nelson should think about before he gives the Democrats the crown jewel of socialism....Good luck Ben...