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White House press secretary Robert Gibbs tells Face the Nation's Bob Schieffer that the Democrats health care plan will pass this week. (Follow link to watch video clip) The liberals are making an all out push to get the bill passed this week, but most predictions show that the votes aren't there in the House which means the White House will have failed again on a major policy initiative.

Blurring the lines even further between reporting and editorializing NBC's Andrea Mitchell tells Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) that he has to get health care passed for Obama. No liberal bias here. Follow link for video clip.

More than two dozen Democrats are expected to vote against the healthcare reform bill that will hit the House floor in the coming weeks. At least 25 House Democrats will reject the healthcare reform legislation, according to a survey by The Hill, a review of other media reports and interviews with lawmakers, aides and lobbyists. Dozens of House Democrats are undecided or won't comment on their position on the measure. The 25 opposed include firm "no" votes and members who are likely "no" votes. Most Democrats on The Hill's whip list are definitely going to vote no, but others, such...

Forcing health insurance companies to cover people with preexisting conditions with no limits is like forcing automobile insurance companies to cover people who have already wrecked their cars or homeowners after their homes have already burned down. Either premium costs go up across the board or the companies go bankrupt or probably both. It's unworkable. All insurance companies will eventually go broke or insurance will be priced out of the market for most people. Obama wants to totally uproot a system that works very well for 85-90% of all Americans to benefit the 10-15% who are not covered or can't...

President Obama went into the East Room at the White House on March 3rd and talked about bringing the health care "journey to a close." He is giving the Republicans one more chance to sign on to the Democrat's health care legislation, or else he is prepared to move forward without their cooperation. And this time, apparently, he really means it, in spite of the fact that an overwhelming number of polls show, several by as much as 15 or more points, that the public is opposed to such legislation. Shortly thereafter, on MSNBC, news anchor Tamron Hall said that...

For the better part of the last year, health care reform has dominated the national legislative agenda. At the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), panelists discussed alternatives for reform and ways that their individual organizations had already effected the political debate. Moderator Grace-Marie Turner, President of the Galen Institute, said that she didn't believe that the fight to pass ObamaCare was over despite the fact that both houses passed their own individual health care bills but have been unable to reconcile their differences and pass unified legislation. Speaking of the period prior to the election of Senator Scott Brown...

Calling health care a "right" to be guaranteed by the federal government, America's Catholic Bishops are trying to save ObamaCare at a time when the legislation has been pronounced in limbo, dying or dead by most of the media. The evidence of intensive Catholic Bishop lobbying activity suggests that liberal Congressional leaders are going to give the legislation a temporary respite so that liberal Catholics can be persuaded to pressure Congress to pass both national health care legislation and "comprehensive immigration reform" in the form of H.R. 4321, the "Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity" Act. As AIM...

On January 20, the Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed arguing that national health care mandates were constitutional. The article claimed this was true both under modern Supreme Court interpretations and under the Constitution’s original meaning. I do not share the writer’s confidence that national health care mandates are constitutional even under the modern Supreme Court’s altered version of the Constitution — but I recognize that legal scholars differ on this question. However, the claim that the Founding Fathers would have thought the Constitution allows Congress to impose health care mandates is little short of absurd. What really floored me...

PORTLAND, Maine - US Senator Olympia Snowe, smarting over the way Democrats moved health care negotiations behind closed doors and left her and other Republicans shut out of the process, is waiting for them to make the first move toward salvaging portions of the health care overhaul bill. Snowe, once viewed as President Obama’s best hope of crossing party lines to support his health care legislation, said she remains committed to playing a constructive role. But she was left frustrated by the partisanship she saw after Senate Democrats mustered 60 votes, enough to move forward without the threat of delaying...

But for the first time in the yearlong push, Democratic aides — and even some members — finally acknowledged privately that the fear of failure was real. And Congress recessed for the weekend without an obvious path forward as rank-and-file Democrats started splintering in different directions... There was some talk among Senate leadership on Thursday of putting together a letter signed by 51 Democratic senators pledging to pass a cleanup bill if the House would pass the Senate bill. But that effort fizzled when support for it didn’t materialize, insiders said... Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said one possibility involved having...

(OBAMA enters the House of Representatives with a large binder.)OBAMA: Hello, I wish to register a complaint. Hello, sweetie? PELOSI: What do you mean, "sweetie?" OBAMA: I'm sorry, it’s been a rough week. I wish to make a complaint! PELOSI: We're closing for recess. OBAMA: Never mind that, honey. I wish to complain about this health care reform bill that I proposed a year ago. PELOSI: Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian-style Nationalized Health Care Reform Bill... What's, uh...What's wrong with it? OBAMA: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, dear. It’s dead, that's what's wrong with it! PELOSI: No,...

The House Democratic Caucus convened this afternoon in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) office (via mainly teleconference) with members discussing the fine details of pending health care legislations passed in both the House and the Senate. The meeting covered issues, raised by different members, from how Cadillac plans could hike the premiums on regular plans in their districts to the Senate's language regarding abortion not meeting a status quo.

----EXCERPT------ SEN. REID: You obviously weren’t listening. I’m not going to talk about conference committees. I’m talking about passing this bill tomorrow, and as I said yesterday, and I’ll say it again today, you can ask the question many different ways, you’re going to get the same answer. I am looking forward to this vote taking place between seven and eight ‘o’ clock in the morning tomorrow and after I go home to Searchlight, you might get some… after I have a chance to talk other people about how we’re going to proceed on this, but for the time being,...

A day before Sen. Ben Nelson (D - NE) voted for the passage of the Senate's version of the health care reform bill, the Nebraska Senator appeared confident before reporters that his vote would not hurt him back in Nebraska. Last week, The Washington Times asked him what he expected from his constituents, when he returned home after the Senate recessed for Christmas.: "Well, two types[of constituents]. Those who are saying very positive things about this legislation and those that have the opposite point of view. There’s nothing new about that."

How many more times will Dems repeat this junk that the HCR bills are deficit Neutral??? My head EXPLODES every time I hear/read it, because the fact is Health Care will – starting in ‘14 – cost the government a fresh $145 billion EVERY YEAR, if the “reforms” take place. Here are the (approximate) raw numbers: In the first 10 years from when President Obama will (hopefully not) sign the HCR bill, Medicare will be cut by $500 billion, and taxes will be increased by a half trillion dollars. This should reduce the deficit by $1 trillion in the first...

Wholesale National Health Care Malcolm A. Kline, December 11, 2009 Law school professors used to teach their students that hard cases make bad law. Now, budding barristers learn how to make bad law. We should note at the outset that this description fits laws that Congress passed under both parties’ leadership such as the No Child Left Behind Act signed by the last president, which Accuracy in Academia covered extensively and critically. Unlike NCLB, one of these questionable statutes making its way through the U. S. Senate right now does not deal with education though it was hatched by academics....

In an interview on my radio show Wednesday, Arizona Senator Jon Kyl underscored the fact that Senate Democrats do not have the 60 votes they need to pass Obamacare, and that reports about the inevitability of Obamcare passing are part of the Democrat's strategy. (The transcript of the interview is here.) Kyl asserted that Harry Reid routinely announces, and then the MSM echoes, statements about the inevitability of the bill's passing, but then reality catches up. This is happening again today as the premature reports of an agreement to expand Medicare to those 55 and older are exposed as more...

And now, the race for the next 60. Senate Democratic leaders cleared a big hurdle Saturday in their effort to pass a health-care overhaul when they overcame the threat of a filibuster to begin debate on the bill. Now they need to get 60 votes to end debate on the bill. Republicans have vowed to filibuster the final bill, and some moderate Democrats are wavering and threatening to join the opposition. Still, there are a few scenarios where Democratic leaders could try to break the 60-vote threshold. Some are purely theoretical, while others have been attempted in the past to...

Health Care Hijacked Geoff Lewis, November 16, 2009 Increase health care costs; cut Medicare in half; undermine consumer choices and quality of care; and destroy federalism as we know it. These are all the effects that panelists at a recent Heritage Foundation meeting argue the current health care bills will produce if they pass. The speakers at the November 4th Heritage Foundation event, Preserving Freedom and Federalism: What’s at Stake for Americans in the Health Care Debate, argued that instead of expanding the power of the federal government in our health care system, we need to implement the principle of...

Following the election results a few days ago, November third, Speaker Pelosi said ‘we won’? You remember how the Republicans mocked her for this statement? well wel well, Pelosi did indeed win that night – she won the Health Care Reform bill. Had the Republicans won on Tuesday the two open congressional seats, the final HCR vote would have failed in a 218-217 vote. Here is how: