March 12, 2010 -- Late in the day on Friday, Politico reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Democrats that they should brace for a vote on health care as early as next week. She told them Obama would be present for the passage of nationalized health care.
President Obama has delayed a foreign policy trip to stay in Washington, D.C. to push for nationalized health care. In addition, Democrats are fighting among themselves over various versions of health care reform - and Republicans are vowing to fight tooth and nail to defeat the takeover of our health care system.
Democrats are devising deceitful ways to get a bill passed even if it means violating the Constitution. We've moved from Congress voting on bills they haven't read to declaring bills to be law when no one has voted on it.
The latest deceit is to have the House package the Senate version of ObamaCare and the House reconciliation bill into one measure. The House Rules Committee will rule that the Senate bill can be passed without a vote - clearly violating the Constitution.
Chaos abounds in the ObamaCare mess in D.C. The "facts" change every hour and no one has even seen Obama's supposed health care legislation. The Democrats keep coming up with legislative gimmicks to force passage of this socialist health care bill.
House Democrats have confirmed that they will attempt to circumvent pro-life Members of Congress in ramming this pro-abortion bill through the House.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco values) is currently claiming that a reconciliation vote will take place this Monday! There is no way of knowing if she's telling the truth.
The bottom line is this: Every Senator and every Representative must hear from their constituents to oppose any ObamaCare legislation. Action is needed immediately to defeat socialized medicine. Call or write today!
Click here for Members of Congress who particularly need to hear from their constituents.
Below is a summary of the latest antics of the Democrats:
Democrats Fear An Honest Vote
Earlier this week, fearing an honest vote on ObamaCare, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) schemed to push through the Senate version of ObamaCare without a vote from the House.
Slaughter's plan was to have the House consider the Senate version already passed without a vote. The House would first vote on corrections to the Senate bill and then the Senate version would be considered passed.
Yesterday, it was reported that the Senate Parliamentarian, had dealt Slaughter's scheme a serious blow. The Parlimentarian had supposedly ruled on Thursday that Obama must first sign the Senate health care bill before Democrats can pass changes demanded by House. Now, this story is changing. According to Brian Darling:
Reports have come out today that the Parliamentarian has not ruled that the President must sign a law before it is considered a law for reconciliation purposes. First, they came up with a strategy to get Obamacare passed in the House without the House ever voting on the bill, now they have come up with a strategy and a ruling to get the Obamacare bill to qualify as law without the President signing the law. President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid should not support efforts to violate the clear words of the Constitution to pass Obamacare.
President Obama had given Congress a March 18 deadline for passage of his nationalized health care plan, but Members of Congress are balking at the deadline.
The Slaughter Solution was designed to avoid any chance that the Senate version won't pass in the House. Slaughter's scheme would have denied pro-life Democrats and Republicans an opportunity to vote against the pro-abortion Senate version.
House Republican Paul Ryan (WI) was on Hannity last night to explain the Slaughter shenanigans and the unethical maneuverings of Democrats to ram through a nationalized health care system. Watch Ryan and Hannity's video.
The desperation is palpable in D.C. as Democrats see their chances of ramming socialist medicine down our throats evaporating. We must stop them.
Abortion Battle Rages
Pro-life Democrats are angry about the Senate version of ObamaCare because it will provide billions in funding to abort unborn children. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) has vowed to fight any health care bill that provides tax dollars for abortion. The House version contained the Stupak amendment that forbids tax-funded abortions. Senate Democrats don't support such an amendment.
Rep. Stupak claims that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) told him that Democrats want the health care bill to use taxpayer funds to pay for abortions. Stupak made this statement in an interview on Michigan station WKQS. Waxman is head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which together the House version of ObamaCare last year.
Support is falling rapidly for ObamaCare. The Heritage Foundation reports that a poll released on Tuesday shows that 48% of the American people would tell their representative to vote NO on ObamaCare. In January, 49% supported it. This week an Associated Press poll said 68% of Americans don't think Obama or Democrats should pass any health reform without Republicans.
Senate Republicans To Oppose Deceit
Senate Republicans are planning on challenging every attempt by Democrats to use "reconciliation" in ramming through ObamaCare in the Senate. They sent a letter on March 4 to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on their plan. Forty-one Republicans signed the letter.
The letter says in part:
Overhauling our health care system will affect every single American and is simply too important to be passed without broad bipartisan support. Yet, it is clear that the only reason you are considering using the budget reconciliation process to pass this unpopular bill is because you have not been able to attract any Republican support for your comprehensive health bill.
We recommend you rethink your plans of expediting such legislation through Congress over the strong objections of the American people. We urge you to listen to the advice of Senator Robert C. Byrd, who was quoted in the Washington Post on March 22, 2009:
I am certain that putting health-care reform and climate change legislation on a freight train through Congress is an outrage that must be resisted.
Using the reconciliation process to enact major legislation prevents an open debate about critical issues in full view of the public. Health reform and climate change are issues that, in one way or another, touch every American family. Their resolution carries serious economic and emotional consequences.
The misuse of the arcane process of reconciliation -- a process intended for deficit reduction -- to enact substantive policy changes is an undemocratic disservice to our people and to the Senate's institutional role.
We agree with this assessment-misusing the Senate rules in this way would be a tremendous "disservice" to the American people and it is "an outrage" that we should resist.
"Using the Slaughter Solution to avoid a legitimate vote on the Senate version is dishonest and shows the desperation of House Democrats," said TVC Executive Director Andrea Lafferty. "Democrats may experience another kind of slaughter in November if they continue this unethical behavior to force government-run health care on all Americans."
TAKE ACTION: Tell your Representative and U.S. Senators to vote NO on any version of ObamaCare - regardless of what's in it. Every version proposed so far will nationalize health care, drive up costs and result in high taxation.
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