Self-executing rule may be used to pass healthcare!

Whatever it takes. JUST DO IT!


Washington (CNN) -- Can the House of Representatives pass a health care bill without actually voting on it?

That question -- bizarre to most casual political observers -- took center stage Tuesday as top Hous e Democrats struggled to find enough support to push President Obama's top legislative priority over the finish line.

The House is expected to vote this week on the roughly $875 billion bill passed by the Senate in December. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, needs 216 votes from her 253-member caucus to pass the measure. No Republicans are expected to back it.

Pelosi's problem: A lot of House Democrats don't like the Senate bill. Among other things, some House members have expressed concern the Senate bill does not include an adequate level of subsidies to help middle- and lower-income families purchase coverage. They also object to the Senate's proposed tax on high-end insurance plans. The House passed its more-expansive health care bill in November.

Pelosi's solution: Have the House pass the Senate bill, but then immediately follow up with another vote in both chambers of Congress on a package of changes designed in part to make the overall legislation more acceptable to House Democrats.

Now, Pelosi also may try to help unhappy House Democrats by allowing them to avoid a direct up-or-down vote on the Senate bill. The speaker may call for a vote on a rule that would simply "deem" the Senate bill to be passed. The House then would proceed to a separate vote on the more popular changes to the Senate bill.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Tuesday that Republicans will try to block the procedure. They will try to force a vote on a resolution requiring the Senate health care bill to be brought to an up-or-down vote.

Video: Health care vote nears

Video: Obama pushes health care in Ohio

Video: Crunch time for health care

Video: Tea Party plans protests

RELATED TOPICS

• Health Care Reform
• U.S. House of Representatives
• U.S. Senate
• Democratic Party
• Republican Party

The Democratic plan is "the ultimate in Washington power grabs, a legislative ploy that lets Democrats defy the will of the American people while attempting to eliminate any trace of actually doing so," Boehner said.

Senate Minority Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, referred to the maneuver as Pelosi's "scheme and deem" plan Tuesday morning. He called it "jaw-dropping in its audacity."

The "process has been tainted," he said on the Senate floor. This "will go down as one of the most extraordinary legislative sleight of hand in history. ... Make no mistake: This will be a career-defining and a Congress-defining vote."
He said the "entire effort has been a travesty."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, sought to brush aside the GOP complaints, telling reporters that Republicans have used the maneuver -- also known as a "self-executing rule" -- more often than Democrats in the past.

"Process is interesting," Hoyer said. "But in the final analysis what is [more] interesting [to] the American public is what this bill will do for them and their families to make their lives ... more secure."

Hoyer said House Democratic leaders haven't made any final decisions regarding the process that will be used to try to pass the Senate bill. But he defended the self-executing rule as a legitimate tactic and promised the House will vote on the Senate bill "in one form or another."

Congress first used the self-executing rule in 1933, according to a memo that Morris sent to reporters Tuesday. Morris noted the rule is typically used on votes to increase the debt limit. He also argued it has been used "far more often by Republicans than by Democrats."

The spat over the rule is the second major procedural argument to erupt between Democrats and Republicans in the health care debate in recent weeks.

GOP leaders also are fuming over Democrats' decision to use a legislative maneuver called reconciliation, which will allow changes to the health care bill to clear the Senate with a simple majority of 51 votes.

Senate Democrats lost their filibuster-proof, 60-seat supermajority in January with the election of GOP Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts.

Republicans contend that reconciliation, which is limited to provisions pertaining to the budget, was never meant to facilitate passage of a sweeping reform measure such as the health care bill. Democrats point out that reconciliation was used to pass several major bills in recent years, including George W. Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

Democratic leaders also have indicated they need to do whatever is necessary to bring closure to what has become an acrimonious yearlong debate. Obama has pushed for a final congressional vote in recent weeks.

"I think people have come to the realization that this is the moment," senior White House adviser David Axelrod said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

If enacted, the Democratic reform proposal would constitute the biggest expansion of federal health care guarantees since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid more than four decades ago. The plan is expected to extend insurance coverage to more than 30 million Americans.

The Senate bill would reduce federal deficits by about $118 billion over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Congressional Republicans contend the plan amounts to an ill-conceived government takeover of the country's health care system. They have said it will do little to slow spiraling medical costs. They also argue it will lead to higher premiums and taxes for middle-class families while resulting in deep Medicare cuts.

Public opinion polls indicate a majority of Americans have turned against the administration's health care reform plan, though individual elements of the proposal remain widely popular.

CNN's Ted Barrett, Alan Silverleib, Paul Steinhauser and Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report. 

....And how many of those people are misinformed 'till hell won't have it?

Let The Sun Shine In......

Republican Learning Curve....

 ....and why it is necessary to prosecute American war criminals.

During the crash called the Great Depression, Hoover refused to help the people, saying that the market would correct itself in time. Problem was, none of the working class had time.

Learning: zero...action: do their damnedest to destroy the New Deal and the Great Society because of their fear of socialism, even when balanced with capitalism. The New Frontier was simply murdered.

Nixon: Most people my age remember well those years and crimes. Lesson learned. Do what you will, future presidents. The worst that can happen is that you may be forced resign, just ahead of an impeachment and trial by the senate, and avoid any kind of real punishment. All of the high ranking criminals of the Nixon walked free.

Reagan/Bush: Iran/Contra: Never fear, the guy who was basically behind most of the crimes got elected president, after Mr. Reagan's terms were up and he was so confused he didn't even know his own Sec. of State or that he had ever been president, for that matter.

Clinton let the matter drop, saying let bygones be bygones. Problem is, the rest of the world remembers what happened during the Reagan wars in Central America, under the cover of the "War on Drugs,"another war so stupid that it is trash to the rational mind. Basically, the Reagan/Bush administration told Congress to shove it and that they would do as they damn well pleased. The Boland amendment be damned! Meanwhile, Cocaine was being flown into the U.S. by the CIA just as fast as financial aid to the Contras went out, through a circuitous route, involving Iran and Israel.

Republicans now believed they were truly invincible, and with very good reason. Casper Wineberger was pardoned by Poppy Bush and none r of them really paid any price at all.

All of the above gave us the BuCheney years of horror.

This is the Republican learning curve. If they can get away with all they have gotten away with, why not start WWIII. Nothing will happen to them. Nothing ever has.

It is time that changed, and if it doesn't change now our country will implode.

It is past time to hold criminals accountable, especially those with wealth and power, as they can do the most damage.

The release of the torture memos opens the door to accountability. We, the people, must insist on it, NOW!

If those rsponsible for the nightmarish last 8 years are not held accountable, how can we stay here? If we do, we are upholding war crimes of a most grave nature, as well as crimes against the Constitution.

Maybe that sounds simple....too simple. Most of the time the truth is simple. We are the ones who complicate it beyond all reason.

The minute the Bush administration began their own campaign of terror, we lost the "war on terror," as if one could actually declare a war on a deeply felt emotion.

Gather the evidence and put the "Deciders" on trial. We really have no choice but to do so or leave.


Let The Sun Shine In......

The Republican Party: A study in comedic uselessness

P.M. Carpenter

 

Here's a little epistolary advice for the GOP, c/o the House Republicans, attn: Eric Cantor: Stop trying.

Just stop. At least for a few months. Go home or back to the office, kick up your feet and forget the whole scene. Pour a few drinks. Say a few prayers. Get into group therapy. Maybe ... maybe even read a book -- you know, go radical. Anything but these endless public displays of cluelessness. Because when you're in a hole ...

Yet House Republicans dug themselves yet deeper yesterday, or perhaps it was sometime late last night or during the wee hours of this morning. I don't know the precise moment of Creation, nevertheless the fruit of their labor is now viewable: the "Economic Solutions Center: Brought to you by the House Republicans." No kidding.

The Web site was, I gather, meant to be up and running in tandem with the Politico's lead story yesterday: "GOP scrambles to show it has ideas" -- the editorially chosen verb an appropriate one, since the GOP-ballyhooed site was nowhere to be found. Although more than once it referenced the site as a going concern, the Politico -- suspecting unremedied incompetence, I guess -- graciously provided no link; nor did several online searches of various word-combinations produce a relevant result.

I swear, today's GOP makes the disheveled left of the 1980s look like a gaggle of efficiency experts.

Anyway, by this early morning -- poof -- there it was, unscrambled, although frankly its existential absence was immeasurably more interesting.

Working deductively, here's what the Politico reported: "The mission appears to be as much about repackaging long-standing principles as it is about offering brand-new ideas for each debate. [The site] often restates proposals Republicans offered as their alternatives to the president’s plans. In the jobs section, for instance, Cantor reiterates the party’s commitment to offer small businesses a tax deduction and to reduce the tax rates on the lowest income brackets."

(There is a "Learn More" link helpfully provided on the "Jobs Plan" page, and, wishing indeed to learn more about the GOP's latest tax-reducing benevolence toward the oppressed affluent -- sadly unmentioned on the main "Jobs" page -- I clicked on it. This yielded only a staring match. Frank Luntz must still be working on the doubleplusgood wording.)

So, a tax deduction and a tax reduction -- the House GOP's twin answers to its self-posed question: "How will I keep my job?"

Well, moving on, what about, "How will I grow my savings?" First, House Republicans want you to know -- and I sure didn't know this -- that "current law limits the amount Americans can put into their retirement savings." (Alert to Bill Gates' accountant.) Second, they're offering -- you got it -- a savings tax credit, which presumably you'll take advantage of when you manage to keep your job only through a tax deduction/reduction.

"How should we use taxpayer money?" asks the GOP on a separate page. Naturally, in the dire depths of a repression we should choke the one spending outlet we have -- government -- but equally important is that the GOP -- ready? here it comes -- would "permanently [extend] the 2001/2003 tax relief provisions."

OK, so now you're keeping your job and you're growing your savings and you're taming the dastardly Leviathan, all through the miraculous blessings of tax relief, but, I hear you cry, "How will I keep my house?" Right. Need I even bother? "Republicans propose a ... tax credit."

And that, gentle reader, is a comprehensive survey of every possible House GOP solution to every possible problem at every possible turn: tax relief, tax credits, tax deductions, tax reductions, less taxes, fewer taxes, smaller taxes, shorter taxes, not so many taxes. I sense a theme here.

Regrettably, the one Q&A missing from Eric Cantor's Solutions Center is, "How will we ever maintain a two-party system to better confront this economic calamity when our party is so unspeakably lame?"

A principal reason for Cantor's cyber-gibberish is, as the Politico reports, because "GOP leaders ... want to insulate themselves from the 'party of no' label." Which, of course, is easily achievable through the simple cessation of always saying "no."

Another reason, they say, is that they really do have ideas and alternatives, but those ideas and alternatives are going unheard. Hence scrambling Web sites and gimmicky "Solutions Centers" and electronic interactivities on the symbolic fritz. What they cannot seem to digest, however, is that, while ghostly, their solutions are far from unknown. We're perfectly aware of their economic formulas from the Age of George V; it's just that those formulas are forever as dead as he.

Until the GOP goes home in hibernation and rethinks all the fundamentals of its raison d'être, it'll twist in the wind and bleach its bones and ultimately scatter to the ages. For now, it is simply, comically useless. 

(Until then, the Dems will just have to keep the Goopers afloat, eh?)

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

Let The Sun Shine In......

What's Up With The Dems?

This author is asking a fair question. Can we help him with an answer, speculation or two? Maybe it's as simple as this: The best defense is offense.

Maybe not quite that simple. Who all was spied on, not only by the federal governement, but by citizen volunteers in networks of spying cells, whose activites had no real connection with terrrorism. 

Were all political opposition, both D.C. Dems, State Dems, peace activists and others considered enemies of the Bush administration for various reasons, data-mined?


Are the Dems, and even some Republicans, aware they have been a target of domestic spying. 

We know that Pentagon Intel. has spied on Quakers. They call it force protection. Has anyone ever heard of a Quaker (other than Nixon) put any one of our military men and women in harms way, let alone attack them? Makes no sense, does it? I guess it does when it comes time to blame someone for our loss in Iraq.

Here's the thing with us: We don't care who spies on us. We aren't angels, but we are certainly not a threat to our troops or to our founding national principles. 


We can, however, be a huge threat to any kind of tyranny. That's a big part what being an American means.

Bipartinship is not worth refusing to defending those principles. We cannot be all that forward looking when our history shames so many of us. The last administration have to be held fully accountable under the law. If we let this slide, we are through, as a super-power, if not as a nation.

We simply cannot go on without seeing our moral failings as a nation, confessing those failings and making amends.


If we do not take stock now, our country will descend into darkness....as by the laws of karma....it should.

---

April 9, 2009 More Real than Realpolitik: A Conversation Opener By Josh Mitteldorf The Realistic view of American politics is that democracy has been eclipsed by a cynical electoral calculation. The media have a stranglehold on America’s thought process. TV advertising is essential to winning an election, and money is essential to TV advertising. Therefore, all American politicians above a purely local level are in hock to the deep pockets that support their campaigns. They will pay lip service to democracy, but they realize that money is more important to getting re-elected than the constituency’s goodwill. This picture explains everything. Well, it explains a lot, but not everything, and I’m interested in what it doesn’t explain. First, because I’m curious: it’s always interesting to understand the way the world works; and second, because the Realistic view doesn’t offer much hope for change, or point the way to highly-leveraged interventions. Is there a perspective that is both “more real” and more hopeful? Here’s the big clue that has piqued my curiosity: Republicans are stealing elections, and Democrats don’t seem to mind. If this game were all about getting re-elected, you’d think the Dems would be all over the issue of vote count by secret software, not to mention disenfranchisement by arcane registration requirements, and the hundreds of (mostly illegal) dirty tricks that the Republicans used to suppress the vote in the last several elections. Here’s a case where idealistic democratic and selfish Democratic interests are well-aligned, yet the response to this outrage has been tepid in the case of vote suppression, and top-to-bottom denial in the case of software-based vote theft. Why are the Democrats so oblivious to their own self-interest? The voting mess is probably the clearest case of Democrats shooting themselves in the foot, but there are lots of other areas where the appearance has been one of Democratic incompetence in the game of politics. I don’t believe they’re dumb. I’m looking for a better explanation. On the issue of health care, the Democrats are way to the right of the People. 57% of Americans want single-payer health care, despite the fact this option has been frozen out of the public dialog. On the issue of war, the people are disgusted and broke and want out of the Middle East. The main reason Obama was elected is that he was the most Dovish of the mainstream candidates; and yet, in office he is dragging his feet on withdrawal, packing more young men and women off to Afghanistan, redefining the end of the war as 50,000 permanent troops in Iraq! This can’t be a political calculation – something else is going on. Both free, universal health care and an end to the war would be wildly popular, way beyond what might be lost in campaign contributions! The War on Terror is a sham and a fraud. Many, many Americans have figured this out, despite the fact that every newspaper and every TV station legitimizes the WoT every day, explicitly in their reporting, and implicitly in the unspoken context behind the news. I suspect that a lot of Democrats in Congress must know what’s going on, and know that speaking the truth would be a powerful political thing to do. The R’s would, of course, respond with outrage, name-calling and fear-mongering if isolated Dems came out one-at-a-time to tell the truth. But the party might gain the upper hand and win the political advantage if they pulled together and united behind the truth. Easier yet would be to educate the public gradually in a series of Congressional hearings. No one needs to have the courage to stand up and say the Emperor has no clothes – all they would have to do is ask questions. Put middle-level Bush functionaries under oath, and the whole lurid story would come out – trumped up intelligence, authorization for torture, the realization by the Project for a New American Century that with Communism defunct, the leaders needed a new enemy in order to keep progressives from gaining the upper hand. Whether you believe 9/11 was planned and executed by Cheney and Rumsfeld or merely condoned when the Air Defense was grounded for the day – either way, the outrages that would emerge from such hearings would destroy the Republican party, at least for a generation to come, and possibly forever. If Washington is so cynically political, why don’t the Dems play the strongest card in their hand? Dick Cheney had his own personal assassination service, reporting directly to him. Don’t we want to know who they killed? Whoever their targets were, they were people even the CIA would not pursue. My guess is that some of them were purely political targets, enemies of the Republicans without a hint of connection to terrorism. Cheney personally shot a man in the face from point blank range, in a ‘hunting accident’ that has never been investigated. Surely there is more political hay to be made by getting the details of that adventure out to the public than by tattling on the patrons of a $4,000-a-night DC escort service. So here’s the essence of the curious situation in political communications, Washington style: The Republicans are cynically throwing insults at the Democrats, with no regard to the truth, and shaming them, running them out of town for behaviors that we know are commonplace: Eliot Spitzer’s vice was the common indulgence of pent-up politicians on both sides of the aisle. The ‘crime’ that put Don Siegelman in jail was to solicit donations for a charity where he served on the board. But while the Republicans wax indignant at the Dems’ peccadilloes, the Dems never engage in personal attacks, even as there are so many potential targets who richly deserve it. Are we to believe that Dems are just too fundamentally decent to tell the truth? Is it part of the Realist view that the Democrats are above name-calling, so suffused with Christian charity that they can always be counted upon to turn the other cheek? I don’t think so.  (Excuse me, but when did "not telling the truth become decent human behavior? Yes, as Dr. House says, everybody lies, especially about things they have done about which they are ashamed or things they have done that are illegal. Any politician who knows about huge crimes committed by the wealthy and powerful, be they corporate High Hoohahs or official Grand-poobahs, are complicit if they don't tell the truth. There is no decency protecting the criminals) There are some hardscrabble Democratic pols in Washington, not least Mr Bipartisan of the White House, who wants to look forward not backward.  (Yes and this concerns virtually every pelican independent. Of course, the president is not tasked with investigating anyone. That task would fall to Congress and/or the DOJ, in the form of a special prosecutor. I believe that Obama is caught in a trap; one which keeps him from dropping the H-bomb of justice on the heads of numerous members of the last administration, not to mention their knowing enablers in Congress.) Another mystery concerns the economy. The Realist view is that Big Business has control of American politics. The Realist view explains the Clinton years, NAFTA, slashing the Federal safety net, environmental sell-outs, burgeoning bottom lines and stagnating wages. The Clinton presidency was a dream come true for American business; but the Bush reign was something else again.   There were eight years of disappointment for the tycoons, culminating in economic free-fall (we’re still a long way from the bottom). Are we to believe that Business interests are so ignorant of basic economics that they just stumbled into an ideological mistake? With Bush in the White House, why weren’t America’s Blue Chips able to order up a better deal for themselves? And why did the Dems go along with the Bush tax cuts? - tax policies that were transparently theft from the working people to feed the Fat Cats, and not just theft but also a disaster for the economy, sowing the seeds of the present economic collapse? And if the Democrats are the party of Big Business, who then are the Republicans? I have some suggested directions, possible clues to these mysteries, and  I’ll post them next week. But for now, I’m interested in your answers, and eager to get a discussion started in the Comments section... Why are the Dems oblivious to elections that are stolen from them? Why is there no will to conduct Congressional hearings into the Bush crimes – hearings that would discredit the Republicans and put them out of business for many years to come? Why are there so many Republican attack dogs, while Democrats are politely pulling their punches? Why is there no one seizing the political hay to be made from peace? From single-payer health insurance? Why has Big Business permitted the economy to stagnate for 8 years, with trillions in forgone profits? Who does the current collapse serve? Author's Bio: Josh Mitteldorf, a senior editor at OpEdNews, was educated to be an astrophysicist, and has branched out from there to mathematical modeling in a variety of areas. He has taught mathematics, statistics, and physics at several universities. He is an avid amateur pianist, and father of two adopted Chinese girls. This year, his affiliation is with the University of Arizona, where he studies the evolution of aging.

Let The Sun Shine In......