The Health Care Nuclear Option is still the stated plan to get Obamacare to the President’s desk. The latest wrinkle is designed to allow pro-life Democrats to vote for the Senate’s taxpayer funded abortion language while still claiming they never voted for taxpayer funded abortions. Don’t be fooled.
First, let’s be clear that the Senate bill allows tax dollars to be used for abortions. According to Chuck Donovan of The Heritage Foundation, the Senate passed Obamacare bill funds abortion in several ways, even creating an appropriation for Community Health Centers that contains no restriction on abortion subsidies. If the Senate version of Obamacare is passed by the House and sent to the President, then the House has consented to the federal funding of abortion.
House members have come up with a unique way to structure a vote that attempts to avoid the House voting on legislation before it goes to the president. First, the House Budget Committee will report out a reconciliation bill. It is unclear as to whether the Stupak Amendment will be added. This reconciliation measure would be reported for consideration by the House of Representatives as a whole.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) would then package the Senate passed Obamacare bill and the House reconciliation measure into one measure. The House rules committee will report out a rule that will allow the Senate passed Obamacare bill to pass the House without a vote. The rule will be self-executing in the sense that the House will have been deemed to pass the Senate Obamacare bill if the House can muster the votes to pass the reconciliation measure. The House has used this procedure in the past during a debate on funding the Global War on Terror and in passing debt limit increases under the “Gephardt Rule.”
There is a constitutional issue raised by this procedure. Article 1, Section 7, of the Constitution states in part “Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a law, be presented to the President of the United States.” If the House does not vote on a bill, is it considered to “have passed the House of Representatives?” Don’t expect the Supreme Court to take up this case, because this is in the realm of a political issue that the Courts tend to want resolved by the House and Senate through the democratic process. It is a Constitutional concern and should be discussed by all Americans. If any member of Congress claims to have not voted for the pro-abortion Senate passed bill, one can point to this provision in the Constitution to argue the opposite.
Procedurally, this would happen in the following order. The House Rules Committee would approve this self-executing rule. The House would vote on the rule that allows this scenario. Then the House will vote on the reconciliation measure. Upon passage of the reconciliation measure the Senate Obamacare bill will be deemed to have passed the House and the reconciliation measure will be sent to the Senate. This so called “Deeming Resolution” is a trick that allows the House to pass a bill they never voted upon. Therefore, the real vote on the pro-abortion Senate passed bill will be the vote on the rule to allow this scenario to roll out on the House floor.
One provision that may make the rule is a provision that does not allow the House to report the Senate passed Obamacare bill to the President until the Senate passes a reconciliation bill. Bills are enrolled before being sent to the President for his signature and the House can prevent the enrollment and delivery of Obamacare to the President until the Senate completes work on the reconciliation measure. Sound complicated? Yes and it is supposed to so the American people can’t understand that the House is on the verge of passing an unpopular Obamacare bill, yet they are reserving the right to claim that they did not vote for the Senate passed bill.
If the liberals in the House can pull off this trick, this would have allowed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to have secretly written the version of Obamacare going to the President’s desk. Do you remember Harry Reid and the Chamber of Secrets? Reid merged, without any official proceedings, the Senate HELP and Senate Finance Committee versions of Obamacare, with his personal additions to the bill including a Public Option with an opt out for states, in closed door meetings with political elites. Basically, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, OMB Director Peter Orszag, Senators Harry Reid (D-NV), Max Baucus (D-MT), Chris Dodd (D-CT) and a few other liberal Senators have rewritten health care law in secret closed door meetings.
After those meeting the Senate moved to proceed to this bill, without any hearings or opportunity for public review. During debate in the Senate, Senator Harry Reid crafted a manager’s package of amendments and added the Cornhusker Kickback for Nebraska, a Louisiana Purchase and a Gator-Aid earmark. Now the House is preparing to pass this bill without a vote. The American people should demand that Congress start over. This secretive and non-transparent procedure is not way to force through Obamacare.
This week, Obama showed himself once again to be out of touch with both Americans and with the current debt situation in the United States. He called on the determination, optimism, and fundamental decency of all Americans, but then seemed to suggest that Americans should focus that determination on passing his health care bill. If Obama wants his presidency to be a success and for our economy to turn around, he will need to learn the lessons of the recent elections. To regain his footing with the American people, he will have to do more than institute a delayed, short-term, token spending freeze and acknowledge that the key to pulling us out of this recession lies with the innovation and motivation of the American people—not with yet another expensive program.
In his speech, he promised that he wouldn’t do what was popular, but would do what was necessary. Unfortunately, it seems he has done neither. Over the past year he has pushed and shoved a tremendously unpopular health care agenda, and attempted to buy off the last Senate vote with $100 million of our tax dollars. His tax and regulatory policies, in one year, have dropped us, according to the Heritage Foundation’s 2010 edition of the Index of Economic Freedom, for the first time ever, from being the land of the free, to the land of the “mostly free.”
And even as he promised yet another “jobs” bill, he is 7 million jobs short of where he promised we would be right now. He promised a growth of 3.5 million in the last year and instead lost over 3.5 million. Last year, federal spending reached the highest level in American history outside WWII, and under his leadership, the public debt is projected by the CBO to triple to $22.1 trillion by 2020. And his crumb that he tossed to Americans was a paltry $447 billion spending freeze which won’t even take effect until a year from now and is only a tiny sliver of our $3.5 trillion budget and only a portion of his own $862 billion stimulus plan – which has failed. His mission of change has brought Americans into a dangerous situation.
Americans have responded to this failed way of handling our economy and this blind policy by reminding him that what had been claimed as “Kennedy’s seat,” was truly “the people’s seat.” But, as evidenced by his speech last night, he clearly has not gotten the message from the election results in the states of Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. For his presidency to remain effective and for his policies to work, he must listen to the American people, push back his own ideas a little and realize that big government is not the way to go.
As Obama noted, Americans have ideas and are motivated people, unafraid to take risks. What he did not acknowledge was our fierce independence and our profound love for freedom. It is the ingenuity of individual Americans that has made this country so successful–not government programs and expansions. Americans have never wanted the huge government safety net which can also double as a noose. Obama’s current policies would leave the next generation with only the memory of freedom, a country that is hobbled in the world, and one giant debt to pay.
Surrounded by like-minded advisers, Obama seems to only hear echoes of his own voice. He tunes out the poll numbers and election results and focuses on his out-of-touch policy goals. Our forefathers, whom he referenced, took the risk to come to this land for freedom. That spirit of determination and fundamental decency endures; we still love freedom. He said, “Again we are tested, and again, we must answer history’s call.” Should he continue along this path which in the past year has robbed people of opportunity, he may find, true to American nature, history’s call be to stop his own agenda.