If Democrats don’t use reconciliation to vote on healthcare legislation in the Senate, at the least, they’ll have it as a weapon.
“This is a massive abuse of power,” says [Congressman Paul Ryan]. “The reconciliation process was designed for the budget and to help reduce deficits and debt. Now it’s being used to create new entitlement programs. The Democrats hijacked the rules in order to exploit a procedure.”
There’s no mistaking that August was the month from hell for the left-wing healthcare reformist agenda, and their minions in the Democratic party. The NRSC was kind enough to sum up the situation with a nifty, new advertisement (via):
That was good stuff. Good to see some consistent leadership in our government.
Politics is a funny game. A little over six months ago, it appeared that the liberal Democrats were about to run rampant without any impediments to their disastrous, statist reforms and policies. Healthcare reform, or rather, the institution of a massive, federally-funded bureaucracy to control the entire US healthcare system, is the crown-jewel of that agenda—the centerpiece of modern liberalism.
Now, after a grueling summer, the healthcare reform ship has foundered, although a final push for a public option just might be in the offing, spearheaded by the President’s speech tonight.
And I love how some on the left are blaming the crashing-and-burning of the public-option push on Republicans. If only the establishment Republicans were that organized and on message. If only…
The best thing that Republicans have done all year was get out of the way and let the progressives and liberals make asses of themselves all summer.
It’s no big surprise that the House GOP are having a hard time dealing with Barney Frank when it comes to proposing legislation and bringing them to debate and votes. The House Financial Services ranking minority member Spencer Bachus, hasn’t exactly been a bastion of leadership over the past 12 months anyway. But this is interesting and amusing at the same time:
Bachus said he enlisted his deputy ranking member, Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas), to organize weekly meetings with the subcommittee’s top minority members to “make sure that we have a message as to what we’re for and what we’re against and that we’re smart and have a coordinated effort to what we bring to the hearings.”
Neugebauer said, “We all recognize, particularly [with] what happened in the markets in the fall and in the spring right now, that the Financial Services Committee is in the eye of the hurricane, and I think it’s important that we step up.”
It might be to late to stop the liberal assault on limited government going on in the halls of Congress under Democrat leadership right now. Nevertheless, this might be an inkling of a sign that congressional Republicans might be making a decent attempt to get their act together. A coherent message articulated by a unified party? It’s a miracle it took them this long to realize this. Let’s just hope the message doesn’t include calling Democrats socialists but rather a debate on the issues.
With Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democratic party last week, there was great joy on the left. The moonbats on the left began chiding the GOP for their perceived insistence on ideological purity, you know, like nominating a right-wing extremist like John McCain for president last year. No room for moderates! A party of right-wing, bigoted, intolerant extremists! Blah blah blah.
But being on the cusp of attaining the magical 60 votes needed to stop filibusters and such, means (gasp!) that Democrats actually have to govern! And they better govern the right way. Writes David Sirota in a Salon piece:
Sixty Senate votes do seem beautiful … until 10 bought-off, right-wing and/or weak-kneed Democrats decide to keep helping Republicans make the upper chamber our nation’s single most powerful obstacle to “real change.” When that happens, 60 votes become an ugly flame that sears the electoral flesh off politicians who technically have the power to act, but whose subsequent failure to deliver exposes their dishonesty.
Hold on a second. If I’ve heard the moonbats correctly over the last few years, the Democrats have come to power on this tsunami of progressive momentum. We are no longer center-right after all, right? Isn’t everyone in the Democratic caucus on board the Hope and Change express? Gay-marriage, abortion on demand, government taking over private industry to benefit the proletariat, card check, and all the rest? And they’re building a foothold in the SCOTUS, no matter how much Crittenden prays. What a joke they are, these liberals.
Already there are grumblings in the Democratic caucus about their new friend, Arlen Specter. No mistake about it, the GOP has a massive task ahead of them in the next few years—2010 is not looking so bright for Republicans no matter which direction Michael Steele wears his cap. But Democrats should stop offering unsolicited and idiotic advice to Republicans, and get their own ideologically pure house in order, lest their house of cards progressive utopia will collapse before it’s even built.
House Speaker Nancy “Know Your Math” Pelosi is at the Washington Press Club Foundation’s dinner tonight along with other Beltway lawmakers.
Lots of MSM types Twittering the event, including Roll Call and WaPo’s The Sleuth. From all reports, it sounds like Pelosi and company are yukking it up. Glad they can laugh while they and their colossal failure of a “stimulus” package have become the biggest joke in America.
Pelosi apparently joked that times are so tough at the NYTimes that when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner gets a call from the paper, he doesn’t know if it’s a media inquiry or a bailout request.
She also made fun of President Obama’s ears, saying his e-mail address is “I’m all ears at whitehouse.com.”
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar made a joke that would have had Rush Limbaugh boycotted by GLAAD if he had made it. She quipped: “I raised $17,000 from ex-boyfriends. Barney Frank holds that record in the House.”
And the Sleuth at WaPo adds that she overheard Pelosi saying she “wants to pee on the Washington Times.”
“I think the take-away here is ‘screw ‘em,’” half-joked a House Democratic aide.
“Remember, you have a speaker who has dealt with that for a couple years. She dealt with it as minority leader, she dealt with it as speaker [under President George W. Bush],” another staffer close to Pelosi said.
“What she realized with Obama coming in was that, yeah, we can go through this dance, but at the end of the day, this was going to be a tutorial for the Obama folks,” the person added. “They’re all going to vote against you and then come to your cocktail party that night.”
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