An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
Message From Marsha
Email from Rep. Marsha Blackburn (TN-7th):
Rumors about what could happen with the health care bill next week are spreading across Capitol Hill. I thought I would pass on those I am reasonably sure are accurate.
We KNOW two pieces of legislation will need to pass the House. The Speaker will need to find votes for the bill that passed the Senate last Christmas Eve (the Senate bill). The Majority is also putting together a second bill, the reconciliation bill, which makes “fixes” to the Senate bill to make it palatable to House Democrats.
We HEAR the Democrat leadership team could make this reconciliation bill available publicly over the weekend. Some Members have indicated that this bill will be publicly available for a week before it comes up for a vote.
We KNOW the Majority had hoped to pass the Senate bill and the reconciliation bill under what is called a “self-executing rule.” In this scenario, the House would first vote for a rule that says any vote to pass the reconciliation bill is essentially a two-fer which would also constitute a vote on the Senate bill. The Speaker then planned to hold the Senate bill until the Senate passed the reconciliation bill, thus guaranteeing the Senate would act on House priorities before the President could sign anything into law. The Senate Parliamentarian popped this balloon yesterday by instructing the Leadership that the President must first sign the Senate bill before the Senate could act on the reconciliation bill.
We HEAR the Parliamentarian’s decision has made things difficult for the Speaker. It is one thing for the Speaker to ask Members to trust her; it is entirely different to ask them to trust the Senate. As one colleague said, “The Republicans are the opposition, but the Senate is the enemy.”
We KNOW the White House had initially set next Thursday as the deadline for House action on the bill- the date the President was scheduled to depart for Asia. The deadline has been pushed back, as has the President’s trip.
We HEAR we can expect a vote next week or possibly next weekend. This will make the week to come very interesting and very important.
As always, I will keep you updated as events develop.
If, and I repeat a HUGE IF, Congress had two brain cells to rub together, common sense, and was actually ethical, this whole piece of crap legislation would never have gotten this far, AND, since it did, they’d scrap the whole thing, and start over with some REAL effort to aid in the costs of health care. That’s not the purpose though, and we know it. They KNOW that we KNOW, but they don’t give a damn.
Buried in his massive amendment to the Senate version of Obamacare is Reid’s anti-democratic poison pill designed to prevent any future Congress from repealing the central feature of this monstrous legislation!
Beginning on page 1,000 of the measure, Section 3403 reads in part: “. it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.”
In other words, if President Barack Obama signs this measure into law, no future Senate or House will be able to change a single word of Section 3403, regardless whether future Americans or their representatives in Congress wish otherwise!!
Note that the subsection at issue here concerns the regulatory power of the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB) to “reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending.” That is precisely the kind of open-ended grant of regulatory power that effectively establishes the IMAB as the ultimate arbiter of the cost, quality and quantity of health care to be made available to the American people. And Reid wants the decisions of this group of unelected federal bureaucrats to be untouchable for all time.
The man absolutely disgusts me. I don’t hate people, but between he and Queen Nanny…. I could come REAL close.