four-step scenario – Obamacare Passage

[Posted on behalf of a friend]

The following four-step scenario describes one way liberals plan to work the rules in their favor to get Obamacare through the Senate:

Step 1: The Senate Finance Committee must first approve the marked-up version of Sen. Max Baucus’ (D.-Mont.) conceptual framework. Then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) can say that two Senate Committees have passed a health care bill, which will allow him to take extraordinary steps to get the bill on the Senate floor.  

During the mark-up last week, members had difficulty offering amendments and trying to make constructive changed because they lacked actual legislative text and Baucus made unilateral last minute changes. For example, the AP reported that “under pressure from fellow Democrats, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee decided to commit an additional $50 billion over a decade toward making insurance more affordable for working-class families.”  

Step 2:  Sen. Reid will take the final product of the Senate Finance Committee and merge it with the product of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, which passed on a party-line vote in July.

Usually, a bill is voted out of committee, and then the Senate takes up the final product of the committee so that all 100 senators can have a hand in the process. With some help from the Obama administration, Reid will decide what aspects of the HELP and Finance Committee bills to keep.  

Step 3:  Now, Obamacare will be ready to hitch a ride on an unrelated bill from the House. Sen. Reid will move to proceed to H.R. 1586, a bill to impose a tax on bonuses received by certain TARP recipients. This bill was passed by the House in the wake of the AIG bonus controversy and is currently sitting on the Senate Legislative Calendar.  

The move to proceed needs 60 votes to start debate. After the motion is approved, Sen. Reid will offer Obamacare as a complete substitute to the unrelated House-passed bill. This means that the entire healthcare reform effort will be included as an amendment to a TARP bill that has been collecting dust in the Senate for months.  

Step 4: For this strategy to work, the proponents would need to hold together the liberal caucus of 58 Democrats (including Paul Kirk who was named last Thursday to replace Sen. Kennedy), and the two Independent senators (Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont).  These members will have to all hold hands and vote against any filibuster. Once the Senate takes up the bill, only a simple majority of members will be needed for passage. It’s possible one of the endangered moderate Democrats, such as Sen. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), could vote to stop a filibuster then vote against Obamacare so as not to offend angry constituents.  

Once the Senate passes a bill and sends it to the House, all the House would have to do is pass the bill without changes and President Obama will be presented with his health care reform measure. If this plan does not work, the Senate and House leadership may go back to considering using reconciliation to pass the legislation.  

Adopting this secret plan will not strike most Americans as a transparent, bipartisan, effective way to change how millions of Americans get their health care.

Obama Administration Moves to Downplay 9/11

The commemoration of the devastating 9/11 terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people used to be known as “Patriot Day.” That designation was established in December 2001 after the House of Representative passed Joint Resolution 71 by a unanimous 407 to 0 vote.The new term, the September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance, stems from an amendment to the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act that Congress passed and President Obama signed into law in April.

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor’s Business Daily — No Going Back On New Style Of Capitalism?

As memories of the Cold War fade, like photographs in sunlight, few remember the Brezhnev Doctrine. It was enunciated by Leonid Brezhnev in Warsaw in November 1968 as a retrospective justification for the Soviet-led invasion of Prague the previous August by Warsaw Pact forces to halt Czechoslovakia’s liberalization.

The doctrine was supposed to guarantee history would be directional, controlled by a leftward-clicking ratchet. It asserted a Soviet right to intervene to protect socialism wherever it was imposed. We are already testing whether President Obama and other statists who have given his administration and this Congress their ideological cast have a doctrine analogous to Brezhnev’s.

Having aggressively, even promiscuously, blurred the distinction between public and private sectors with improvised and largely unauthorized interventions in the economy, will they countenance a retreat of the state?

via IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor’s Business Daily — No Going Back On New Style Of Capitalism?.

Reality, Fact Check …

An anonymous administration official told The Atlantic that Sebelius “misspoke” and White House health reform communications director Linda Douglass released a statement explaining: “Nothing has changed. The president has always said that what is essential is that health-insurance reform must lower costs, ensure that there are affordable options for all Americans and it must increase choice and competition in the health-insurance market. He believes the public option is the best way to achieve those goals.”

Mark Davis: Health care outrage is plenty real | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Columnists: Mark Davis

As the Obama-Pelosi health care vision takes additional body blows in a long, hot summer of righteous discontent, its proponents have stooped to a level of insult that proves they have lost control of their message.

When two of Congress’ most powerful Democrats bash disagreeing citizens as “un-American,” you know the hinges have fallen off. Their smug lecture in a USA Today op-ed piece this week radiates the sanctimonious condescension that is dragging down President Barack Obama’s suddenly human approval ratings.

via Mark Davis: Health care outrage is plenty real | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Columnists: Mark Davis.

Town halls burst with Obama ‘plants’

By Chelsea Schilling

© 2009 WorldNetDaily

In town hall meetings billed as opportunities for Americans to ask health care

questions of an “open” and “transparent” administration, the White House may be selecting President Obama’s own supporters to ask non-compromising questions.

The White House insists that attendees are selected at random, but a closer look reveals many questioners range from Obama campaign donors and Organizing for America volunteers to single-payer health care lobbyists and Service Employees International Union members.

via Town halls burst with Obama ‘plants’.

Report: U.S. Considers Remaking Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac – Political News – FOXNews.com

The Obama administration is considering an overhaul of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that would strip billions in bad loans and create a new home-loan organization, according to a report from the Washington Post.

Government officials told the Post that the firms’ bad debt would be given to new government financial institutions that would then be responsible for collecting on the debts.

via Report: U.S. Considers Remaking Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac – Political News – FOXNews.com.

Michelle Malkin » Lanny Davis wants you photographed and investigated

Perhaps it is important that we, supposedly conservatives and independents should evaluate our tactics carefully so as not to give the left an option, whether right or wrong, to attack us.  And this definitely qualifies as an attack by the left on our speech.

The consigliere to the Clinton thugocracy decries the taxpayer counterinsurgency — and calls on left-wing hitmen to photograph and investigate Obamacare protesters to prove that they are being “paid” by the “Republican right” to express their opinions and demand accountability from their congressional representatives (never mind that so many of these protests have been aimed at Republicans who have betrayed their principles).

via Michelle Malkin » Lanny Davis wants you photographed and investigated.

The Climate Change Showdown: Dealmaking Begins Anew with Bill in U.S. Senate | GreenOrder on GreenBiz.com

If you thought automakers and banks were the only companies getting a blank check from the government — think again.

As part of sweeping climate change legislation under consideration in Congress, energy companies and utilities will receive hundreds of billions of dollars from the government to help them comply with a new program to regulate greenhouse gases.  Which companies will cash in and how much money will get back to consumers hit with higher energy prices are shaping a summer showdown in Congress.

Yesterday morning, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held the first in a series of July hearings to develop legislative policies to address climate change.  While it was largely a cheerleading session by four top Obama Administration officials on the need for Congress to act quickly, the hearing kicks off a complicated set of negotiations to secure the 60 votes needed in the Senate to avoid a filibuster that would slow and even halt action on climate change this year.

via The Climate Change Showdown: Dealmaking Begins Anew with Bill in U.S. Senate | GreenOrder on GreenBiz.com.

Michelle Malkin » What will happen next if cap-and-tax passes?

America’s biggest oil companies will probably cope with U.S. carbon legislation by closing fuel plants, cutting capital spending and increasing imports.

Under the Waxman-Markey climate bill that may be voted on today by the U.S. House, refiners would have to buy allowances for carbon dioxide spewed from their plants and from vehicles when motorists burn their fuel. Imports would need permits only for the latter, which ConocoPhillips Chief Executive Officer Jim Mulva said would create a competitive imbalance.

“It will lead to the opportunity for foreign sources to bring in transportation fuels at a lower cost, which will have an adverse impact to our industry, potential shutdown of refineries and investment and, ultimately, employment,” Mulva said in a June 16 interview in Detroit. Houston-based ConocoPhillips has the second-largest U.S. refining capacity.

The same amount of gasoline that would have $1 in carbon costs imposed if it were domestic would have 10 cents less added if it were imported, according to energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie in Houston. Contrary to President Barack Obama’s goal of reducing dependence on overseas energy suppliers, the bill would incent U.S. refiners to import more fuel, said Clayton Mahaffey, an analyst at RedChip Cos. in Maitland, Florida.

“They’ll be searching the globe for refined products that don’t carry the same level of carbon costs,” said Mahaffey, a former Exxon Corp. refinery manager.

Prices Seen Rising

One in six U.S. refineries probably would close by 2020 as the cost of carbon allowances erases profits, according to the American Petroleum Institute, a Washington trade group known as API. Carbon permits would add 77 cents a gallon to the price of gasoline, said Russell Jones, the API’s senior economic adviser.

via Michelle Malkin » What will happen next if cap-and-tax passes?.

via Bloomberg.