What Is Going On With The Health Care Bill?

Anybody here know what’s going on with the health care bill? No? Well, you are not alone. Those in Congress, or the leaders, don’t seem to know either.

You may or may not have heard reports that Obama plans to unveil a “Plan C” type of bill tomorrow. No, this isn’t the 11 page summary he recently put online, but a new scaled back bill designed to incorporate some Republican “ideas” and supposedly based on the summit he held last week. That is what is being reported anyway.

It’s killing me that they seem to be throwing together a sweeping bill affecting all of us and our economy, a bill that Congress can hardly have time to read (much less the public), and then vote on it a few days later. Killing. Me.

Basically Obama wants a bill that isn’t the exact bills the public has been howling about, and let Democrats punch it through through reconcilation (although, remember, Reid said, “No one is talking about reconcilation”). At this point the Democrats don’t seem fully aware of how truly ticked off the American pubic will be if they do this.

From what I understand, this is how it should work. The first bill, the bill everyone really hates passed by the Senate, will have to pass the House (but not signed into law). Then the Senate can consider Obama’s bill. But first the House will try and pass Obama’s bill, the reconciliation bill. Then the Senate will pass Obama’s bill, the reconciliation bill. Then the President can then sign both bills.

I call them the “who gives a flying rat’s butt what the American people want” bills.

I said that even the leaders don’t seem to know what’s going because according to thehill.com, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) today said there is no truth to the reports that Obama will press Congress to pass the smaller version of the reform bill that Pelosi has been yammering about. Hoyer is saying that Obama’s plan is the 11 page document he put online last week.

He says the plan is for the House to take up the Senate bill, and then consider a package based on Obama’s proposal and, as I said, punch it through with reconciliation. They have decided to call it “a simple majority vote” instead of reconciliation, hoping the American people are as dumb as they think we are.

We aren’t.

Bottom line. The Democrats will pass this sweeping legislation that will take over 1/6 of our economy, over the clear majority of the American people that don’t want it. They will do it on a purely partisan basis using a procedural process never used before on big legislation without wide public and bi-partisan support*, and used only for budgetary measures previously.

This is what will happen. Get ready for it.

There is this thing called Karma though. It almost always comes back and bites you in the butt when you do something like this. Not only will Republicans probably win back the Majority in November, but the line using reconcilation has been crossed. The Democrats can’t howl when it’s used against them.

The Democrats imagine that this legislation, once signed into law, cannot be reversed. Why? Because nothing ever has before of this magnitude. But this is a different time. This is Tea Party time. You have the American people paying attention and they will not stand for this. You wait. You will see. There is a big storm coming.

It’s us.

*I added “without wide public and bi-partisan support” because it has been used in the past with welfare reform in 1996, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1997. But the public was for these things, and they were both bi-partisan bills.

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