"We are not going to pass universal healthcare with a 50 plus one strategy. We're not going to have a serious, bold energy policy of the sort I proposed yesterday unless you build a working majority." --Sen. Barack Obama, October 2007
But as we now know, the statements above were nothing but campaign promises. And as Obama told John McCain at last week's health care summit: "the election's over." Today we see the REAL Barack Hussein Obama. He's NOT the champion of unity, bipartisanship and sensible government that he campaigned on.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010 President Obama declared the debate on health care over and announced his support to use reconciliation to pass health care. In a speech where he offered Republicans only window dressing compromise in a bill thousands of pages long, Republican ideas amounting to a few dozen pages will be inserted for show. Even the "compromise" on lawsuit reform, which is needed to control costs, is nothing more than a trial program in a few states which can easily be canceled with pressure from the Trial Lawyers who are heavy contributors to the Democrat Party.
You Lie Reid
And how about this whopper?
Reid tells attendees at last week's health care summit that "You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts...No one has talked about reconciliation."
Those "opinions" were facts and Reid knew it at the time. The man is liar!
The Truth About Reconciliation
The same people, like Reid above, who openly lie about plans to use reconciliation have been doing a lot of spinning to justify use of that tactic. Like everything else they say, it's all a lie.
This Wall Street Journal editorial lays it out perfectly:
Abuse of Power
'An undemocratic disservice to our people and to the Senate's institutional role' -- Senator Robert Byrd
Wall Street Journal
MARCH 3, 2010
..."They know that this will take courage," Nancy Pelosi said in an interview over the weekend, speaking of the Members she'll try to strong-arm. "It took courage to pass Social Security. It took courage to pass Medicare," the Speaker continued. "But the American people need it, why are we here? We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress."
Leave aside the irony of invoking "the American people" on behalf of a bill that consistently has been 10 to 15 points underwater in every poll since the fall, and is getting more unpopular by the day, particularly among independents. As Maine Republican Olympia Snowe pointed out in a speech last December, Social Security passed when Democrats controlled both Congress and the White House, yet 64% of Senate Republicans and 79% of the House GOP voted for it. More than half of the Senate Republican caucus voted for Medicare in 1965. Historically, major social legislation has always been bipartisan, because it reflects a durable political consensus.
Reconciliation is the last mathematical gasp for ObamaCare because Democrats can't sell their policy to Senator Snowe, any other Republican, or even dozens of Democrats. This raw exercise of political power is of a piece with the copious corruption and bribery—such as the Cornhusker kickbacks and special tax benefits for union members—that liberals had to use to get even this far.
Democrats often point to welfare reform in 1996 as a reconciliation precedent, yet that bill passed the Senate with 78 votes, including Joe Biden and half of the Democratic caucus. The children's health insurance program in 1997 was steered through Congress with reconciliation, but it, too, was built on strong (if misguided) bipartisan support. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 that created Schip passed 85-15, including 43 Republicans. Even President Bush's 2001 tax cuts, another case in reconciliation point, were endorsed by 12 Senate Democrats.
...
Regrets, they've got a few. Yet these Democratic Sinatras will still do it their way. President Obama is expected to endorse reconciliation in remarks this morning.
The goal is to permanently expand the American entitlement state with a vast apparatus of subsidies and regulations while the political window is still (barely) open, regardless of the consequences or the overwhelming popular condemnation. As Mr. Obama fatalistically said after his health summit, if voters don't like it, "then that's what elections are for."
In other words, he's volunteering Democrats in Congress to march into the fixed bayonets so he can claim an LBJ-level legacy like the Great Society that will be nearly impossible to repeal. This would be an unprecedented act of partisan arrogance that would further mark Democrats as the party of liberal extremism. If they think political passions are bitter now, wait until they pass ObamaCare.
Neal Boortz found this quote which sums up what we are witnessing today:
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it."
--Frederic Bastiat
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