Tag: health care

*Moral* courage.

Surely they can at least manage that.

The time has come for somebody in the Democratic party to show moral courage.

Consider the situation. Despite a seventy vote majority in the House of Representatives and a then-twenty majority in the Senate, the Democratic party was only able to barely pass health care legislation in both Houses of Congress; and the two versions that were passed do not agree with each other. To get that far, Congressional Democrats made a series of ad hoc deals and temporary understandings, with no clear plan on how to reconcile them all; this, coupled with more or less every legislative and procedural trick on the books, have allowed them to get almost to their goal. Unfortunately, they don’t actually know what their goal even is at this point, but they’re almost there.

But also at this point they are, to use a cliche, grinding metal. The Democrats had made a choice last year to shut out the Republicans from any sort of meaningful discussion, interaction, or independent contribution in the process of health care legislation; and followed that with a healthy dose of attempting to demonizing the GOP when the GOP had the temerity to object. As a result, the Republican party has adamantly refused to provide any sort of a fig leaf to this steadily more unpopular legislation, and has been punished for that behavior by the American public by being more and more favored to win back at least the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the House members who voted ‘no’ on the bill the first time are growing more and more terrified of voting ‘yes:’ and some of the ones who voted ‘yes’ are trying to decide whether or not doom is less likely if they switch their votes or not. And every Democrat in Congress is aware that keeping their individual seats are considered to be less important than passing the bill. Continue reading *Moral* courage.

‘Excusez moi, si vous plait, Mme Pelosi?’ #rsrh

I’m not sure that I heard this right…

But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.

Well. I guess that I did.  Anyone else get the impression that the Democrats are kind of punch-drunk right now? – Because there’s no way that this particular sentence should have been let outside without a keeper.

Via JammieWearingFool, via AoSHQ.

US Chamber of Commerce getting into the game.

I almost titled this “US Chamber of Commerce starts recognizing its class interests,” but that kind of language bugs people on the Right, for some reason.

Say hello to the US Chamber of Commerce.  Or don’t; they’re coming to sit down at the table any which way.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is building a large-scale grass-roots political operation that has begun to rival those of the major political parties, funded by record-setting amounts of money raised from corporations and wealthy individuals. [snip] The new grass-roots program, the brainchild of chamber political director Bill Miller, is concentrating on 22 states. Among them are Colorado, where incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet is vulnerable; Arkansas, where Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln faces an uphill reelection battle; and Ohio, where the chamber sees opportunities in numerous House races and an open Senate seat. The network, called Friends of the U.S. Chamber, has been used to generate more than a million letters and e-mails to members of Congress, 700,000 of them in opposition to the Democratic healthcare plan. That is an increase from 40,000 congressional contacts generated in 2008.

The article goes on to note that the CoC’s grassroots planning recently got a big boost from the recent Citizens’ United case, as well as that this organization is increasingly publicly acknowledging that ‘pro-business growth’ means ‘pro-Republican.’ And why would that be? Probably because of Democratic assaults like this one: Continue reading US Chamber of Commerce getting into the game.

Do we need an investigation into the Massa/Hoyer thing?

Full disclosure: I regret Eric Massa’s resignation solely because I was looking forward to seeing his concession speech on Election Night, seeing as he’s an opportunistic progressive sycophant who last year spouted off bizarre nonsense about ‘treason’ to other progressives equally ignorant of the Constitution. Michelle Malkin has two posts nicely summarizing precisely why embracing this guy is a poor life choice for conservatives; my only change is that I prefer the term ‘suckweasel.’  Less likely to get caught by web-blocker software.

All that being said, this sounds like an allegation:

Massa slammed House Maj. Leader Steny Hoyer for discussing a House ethics committee inquiry, accusing Hoyer of lying in an effort to eliminate an opponent of health care. Hoyer said last week he heard in early Feb. about allegations against Massa, and that he told Massa’s office to report the allegations to the ethics committee.

“Steny Hoyer has never said a single word to me at all, never, not once,” Massa said. “Never before in the history of the House of Representatives has a sitting leader of the Democratic Party discussed allegations of House investigations publicly, before findings of fact. Ever.”

Somebody is lying, here.  Either Massa, or Hoyer: and if it’s Hoyer, it doesn’t matter whether Massa was or was not sexually harassing his staff.  The House Majority Leader does not get to abuse the public trust by lying about what he did in a particular investigation.  It’s not so much this specific case as it is what happens in less public ones.  There’s a word for having two standards of behavior, based on how much media coverage one is expecting: it’s called ‘hypocrisy.’

Fortunately, this is easy to check: all Steny Hoyer has to do is release the documentation showing that he followed House procedures with regard to ethics investigations.  Presumably, that includes the kind of notification that he claims and Massa denies, and will stop this potentially disquieting development cold.  In fact, I’m kind of surprised that it’s not available yet; which is something that can be fixed, later…

By the way: did you know that Hoyer has a GOP challenger this year?  Charles Lollar.  We’ve talked: good guy, solid fiscal conservative, and if I lived just a little bit east of where I live now I’d be voting for him in both the primary and the general election.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Two weeks to withdrawal on health care?

How nice of the White House to tell us how long they can hold out.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs is ratcheting up the pressure on Congress to complete health-care legislation, setting March 18 as the deadline by which a final bill should be passed.

[snip]

The White House deadline means Congress would have exactly two weeks to pass a version of the existing Senate-approved bill in the House of Representatives and then pass a second bill filled with “fixes” in both chambers.

Two weeks. Fourteen days. Three hundred and thirty-six hours. When we run out the clock, the White House will either have to embarrassingly declare that the health care discussion is over for now; or even more embarrassingly admit that they were irrelevant to the health care discussion in the first place. Either way, the longer this is delayed, the more (justifiably) scared and anxious wavering Democrats get.  Already they’re unsure of how much support they’re going to get from the administration on this; and now that it’s been made clear that there’s a firm timetable for withdrawal in place, that’s only going to make the precariousness of their positions even more clear*.

So… we run out the clock.  For the good of the country, and by the will of its people.

Moe Lane

*Unilateral timetables are like that – Wow!  Deja vu!

Crossposted to RedState.

‘Nobody… knows… the bill that we’ll see…’

Who is running this rodeo, anyway?

Fox News (Via Hot Air):

President Obama will soon propose a health care bill that will be “much smaller” than the House bill but “big enough” to put the country on a “path” toward health care reform, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday.

“In a matter of days, we will have a proposal,” Pelosi said, pointing to Obama’s forthcoming bill.

“It will be a much smaller proposal than we had in the House bill because that’s where we can gain consensus. But it will be big enough to put us on a path of affordable, quality health care for all Americans that holds insurance companies accountable.”

CNN:

President Obama is likely to lay out a political road map Wednesday for passage of sweeping health care legislation, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.

Gibbs said the president will talk about “the way forward” to pass a bill. Among other things, Obama is expected to advocate for an “up or down vote” in Congress if necessary, Gibbs said.


The Hill (via @mkhammer):

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) says there is no truth to reports that President Barack Obama will press Congress to pass a significantly smaller healthcare reform bill.

“I don’t have reason to believe that that’s accurate,” Hoyer told The Hill following a speech at a Federation of American Hospitals conference Tuesday.

You know, Republicans sit down and talk to each other before they do something. It’s a radical notion, I’m sure, but we find that it works for us.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Health care reconciliation is an exercise in futility.

Ed Morrissey sums up his major counter-argument thusly to Andy McCarthy’s argument that progressive Democrats are ready to trade control of Congress in exchange for imposing health care rationing on the populace:

Andy may be right that Democratic leadership has made the decision that political oblivion is an acceptable cost for a one-time remaking of America that Republicans will find difficult to reverse in the next session.  However, I suspect that this strategy doesn’t account for the fact that the people who will actually have to end their careers may not appreciate getting forced into marching off a cliff while the leadership stays safely in their rear-echelon bastions of San Francisco and New York City.

…and I’d like to add my two cents: it won’t work anyway.  People like to talk about how government programs and agencies never die, once instituted, with the Great Society and the New Deal being the most used examples.  What’s not mentioned is that both of those programs were popular.  People wanted a Social Security program.  They wanted Medicare.  They do not notably want this monstrosity of a health care bill*.  And if the Democrats decide to (and manage to) force it down our throats anyway, Republican legislators will find a way to shut it down in January 2011.  The government has had over two and a quarter centuries to develop bylaws, operational procedures, codicils, and whatnot; there is always going to be a legislative fig leaf, suitable for framing and rationalization.

I consider this bill dead.  But if the Democrats are so determined to resurrect it, fine: we’ll just prune their internal power structure down to the roots in November and kill the bill again in January.  In fact, that sounds kind of fun.

Moe Lane

*They like individual aspects of the bill; but they don’t want the whole package.  But don’t let me stop anybody from advocating their particular religious beliefs.

Crossposted to RedState.

Congressional Democrats still wondering who the sucker was at yesterday’s summit.

When Hot Air and the Daily Beast are giving the same review – Republicans looked good, the President looked all right, other Democrats looked bad – you have to end up wondering whether the President actually minds.  Jonah Goldberg fairly accurately sums up what Obama has to work with, after all:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi relied on the Democrats’ favorite rhetorical gambit: policy-by-anecdote. Invoking the sad plight of some person no one knows can be effective, but we’ve been hearing such stories for a very long time; support for Pelosi’s solutions has still plummeted.

But it was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, mugging for his doomed reelection bid at home, who put the ugliest face on the Democratic party. Cranky, mean, and short-tempered, Reid seemed like he was sitting on a carpet tack throughout the discussion. He snapped that “no one is talking about reconciliation” — a reference to the arcane parliamentary procedure Democrats are considering as a means to ram their unpopular bill through Congress.

That’s true, save for the more than 100 House Democrats and more than 20 Senate Democrats who have already signed letters calling for reconciliation. His crotchety dyspepsia, combined with his arrogant dishonesty, made the leader of the Senate seem like the sort of oldster who would pinch little kids for fun if he could get away with it.

Imagine for a moment a world where the 112th Congress is not being run by Pelosi and Reid.  Do you think that the President might end up with a health care reform bill that… forget ‘he can happily sign to show how bipartisan he is.’  At this point, the President will settle for a bill that he can actually sign.  Which was the ostensible point of this summit to begin with; and the only event of real note there was a rather pointed refutation of the Democratic lie that Republicans have no health care ideas or plans.  Not even David Gergen wants to run with that meme anymore.

I’ve noted this before, and I’ll note it again: both of the two major American political party are really two mini-parties.  There’s the legislative one, which concerns itself with Congress and the state houses; and then there’s the executive one, which deals with the Presidency and the governorships.  The two groups are usually more-or-less working in tandem; but they don’t always have congruent, or even parallel, objectives.  Put it less pretentiously: what’s good for President Obama isn’t necessarily good for Speaker Pelosi and SML Reid.  And if the President comes out of this looking good, he may not care about how badly his colleagues look in comparison…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.