Big Dogs House

Reconciliation Hits A Snag

Mar 12, 2010 Political

The process by which Congress wants to ram the health care takeover through has hit a bit of a snag. The House and Senate have not convened a conference committee to reconcile their respective bills and they do not intend to because that would require the Senate to go through its established voting procedures.

The scheme that has been devised is to use reconciliation, a process reserved for budget matters only, to pass a bill. Under the scheme, the House would have to vote for the Senate bill and then the Senate would use reconciliation to tweak the bill to please the members of the House. The problem is that once the bill is voted on by the House then there is a single, identical bill. It could be sent to Barack Obama and signed into law. This is one reason that many members of the House are not willing to vote for the Senate bill.

The House does not trust the Senate (and by extension, it does not trust Obama).

There were other schemes introduced to help ease the mistrust. The original plan to pass the bill and then tweak it is not popular because there is no guarantee the Senate would hold it until the tweaks are completed. That is now a non issue because the Senate parliamentarian has determined that reconciliation can only be used for an existing law. In other words, the Senate bill would have to be voted on by the House, signed into law by Obama and then reconciled with a simple majority of the Senate.

The House will not go for this because it does not want to take the chance that the Senate bill will become law without the changes the House wants.

So the Democrats are continuing to use convoluted logic to concoct new schemes. The House is considering enacting a rule saying that once they vote on the changes to the Senate bill the Senate bill will be deemed to have passed. In other words, they will vote for a rule change and if that rule change passes they will vote for the fixes to the bill and if that passes the Senate bill will be deemed to have passed. This would allow them to vote for what they want before they have a law to vote on.

It is likely that this is unconstitutional. And do they think Americans are so stupid that we cannot see what they are doing?

Just like Democrats though, change the rules during the game to get the outcome they want.

I have a feeling that this is going to take quite some time to work out because the Democrats are making up the rules as they go along and are doing everything, legal or not, to pass this albatross. This will likely not be voted on prior to the Easter break and if it makes it that far without getting a vote then it might not make it this year. Republicans have already indicated they will follow the reconciliation rules to the letter to keep any item that is not a budget item from passing. This means many of the fixes that the House wants will not make it through. The House Democrats, who are already uneasy, must be even more so after this latest news. They want to get this done soon because they have things to do.

Democrats have to get home to campaign for reelection. They have a lot of lies to tell and a lot of explaining to do.

Sources:
New York Post
Bloomberg
Washington Examiner

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Tags: Democrats, health care, lies, Obama, reconciliation, trust

Preexisting Conditions

Mar 11, 2010 Political

The health care takeover is on life support and all the socialist medicine in the world might not be able to save it. This has not stopped Barack Obama from campaigning around the country and it has not stopped those who think they have a right to government paid health care from holding rallies.

At a recent rally those with the microphone led crowds in chants about free health care for all.

Many young people do not understand that they will be required to buy their own health insurance. They complain that health insurance is too expensive but they will be forced to buy health insurance and there is no way the cost will go down.

The mandate to buy health insurance is needed to cover people with preexisting conditions. Insurance companies routinely refuse to cover people with preexisting conditions. I think there should be reform to require them to cover the preexisting conditions but also allows them to charge more for the insurance. Why should people, many of them young and healthy, be required to pay huge amounts of money in order to cover the elderly and those with preexisting conditions?

The left likes to tell us that since government can force you to have car insurance it is legal for it to force you to have health insurance. This is untrue because you have a choice NOT to drive. Since they use that analogy, let’s go with it a bit further. Car insurance companies require bad drivers to pay more money for car insurance. If this is allowed then why not require those with preexisting conditions to pay more for health care coverage?

The funny thing is that the same liberals who applaud employers who refuse to cover their workers who smoke (to keep costs down) demand that government require insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions which are not covered to, wait for it…

Keep costs down.

The health care takeover bill is losing Democrats and the trust issues and parliamentary manipulation might just well bury this thing in the graveyard of bad legislation.

Right where it belongs.

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Tags: Democrats, health care, mandates, Obama, preexisting conditions

Democrats Target CIA

Mar 1, 2010 Political

The Democrats do not like the CIA especially since that organization showed that Nancy Pelosi lied about her knowledge of water boarding. Maybe if we water board her we can get the truth…

Democrats tried to slip language in a bill that would hamper the efforts of the CIA and make people subject to 15 year jail terms for harsh interrogation. The language was ambiguous and would hamper our intelligence gathering efforts. To their credit, some Democrats came out against the provision which was eventually removed. But this is not likely the end of the effort:

Hoekstra said the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, who “have such a distaste for the rank and file in the CIA,” will “use whatever tools at their disposal to find other ways to make this law.”

Hoekstra said he thinks Pelosi and Reyes, on the same day President Obama held his highly publicized health-care summit, “were hoping nobody would notice,” they were pushing the legislation through, trying to “sneak it through.”

Even several Democratic members, Hoekstra said, told him Thursday night when they realized the interrogation amendment made it into the intelligence bill that they had “no idea why the speaker and Reyes would put this in.” The DC

Maybe now is the time for the operatives in the CIA (the real ones, not the Plame types) the work on sabotaging the reelection efforts of people like Pelosi and Reyes. Perhaps the CIA could come up with convincing evidence of wrong doing or compromising situations that would help voters decide when they vote. Maybe some leaked memos around election time would be helpful especially ones that specifically show Pelosi as a liar.

It seems to me that if Pelosi and her ilk want to destroy the careers of people in the CIA then the agents in that agency have an obligation to return the favor and they certainly have the ability to make life miserable from the shadows.

It would be great to see them engage the enemy within from within.

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Tags: CIA, Democrats, penalties

Democrats Reauthorize Patriot Act

Feb 28, 2010 Political

The Democrats opposed the Patriot Act when Bush was the president, or at least they pretended to. They went on rants about how horrible it was, what an invasion of privacy it was, blah, blah. They tried to end it and to stop it and to change it because everyone knows Bush was really Hitler and he wanted to listen to granny discuss whole grain cookie recipes to help with constipation.

As a candidate for president, then-Sen. Barack Obama railed against parts of USA Patriot Act that gave the Bush administration sweeping powers to intercept phone and e-mail communications in the name of fighting terrorism with little judicial or congressional oversight, and Obama pledged to institute “robust” checks and balances if elected. PolitiFact

The Democrats wanted some provisions in there to add more oversight to the process but those did not make it in. They voted for it and Obama signed it anyway. In other words, the Democrats and Obama extended the very same Patriot Act that they bashed when Bush was president. They passed that which they claimed to have opposed. Obama signed a bill that contains something he was against when he was running for office. He signed a bill that does not do what he promised he would.

The Democratic Underground is not happy.

Neither is Counter Currents.

I guess this is not the change they were looking for or as one of them put it, the more things change…

Those sneaky Democrats added this to the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act . They did not even have the testicular fortitude to do this as a separate piece of legislation. I think it was by design. Now they can claim they had to vote for it (and Obama can claim he had to sign it) because if they did not Medicare would suffer. Republicans have cover as well. They can claim they had to vote for it because it extended the Patriot Act.

Cowards all.

Additional source:
My Way News

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Tags: cowards, Democrats, liars, Obama, patriot act, Republicans

God Must Not Have Listened To Biden

Feb 25, 2010 Political

This past year has been a tough one for Democrats. They had majorities in both chambers of Congress that were big enough not to need one Republican vote and they could not pass signature items. They have become frustrated with the lack of progress on their Socialization plan so they want to do a few things to give them the upper hand. They want to eliminate the filibuster and they want to invoke reconciliation, a budgetary procedure, in order to pass their the health care takeover bill.

When the Republicans were in charge, they too became frustrated with the Democrats for using the same procedures that they [Republicans] now employ. The Republicans were going to use the nuclear or Constitutional option to allow a simple majority to pass judicial nominees.

The left went nuts over this and talked about how the filibuster was important and how the Founders knew what they were doing and how Republicans in the Senate did not do what Senators throughout history have done [say no to a power hungry president]. Joe Biden said it all when he stated:

I pray God when the Democrats take back control we don’t make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.

God must have decided not to weigh in on Biden’s prayer because the Democrats are involved in the very kind of “naked power grab” Biden lamented over.

Go view the video compilation of Democrats [Breitbart TV] who weighed in on the issue back when they were the minority party and see how their attitudes differ from what they want to do today.

The word hypocrite comes to mind but decide for yourself.

Take particular note of then Senator Barack Obama. In fact, Obama, Clinton, Biden, and Dodd all had something to say and each ran for the presidency…

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Tags: Democrats, filibuster, hypocrisy, nuclear option, Obama