It is so important, it bears repeating:
“I’ll vote against any bill without a public option,” said Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill.
The quote is from ABC News, and right before the Burris-bomb, is this little ticking surprise for Reid:
“There are at least two Democrats who say they’ll vote against any bill that does not include a public option, and there may be many more.”
Perhaps Senator Lieberman’s courage is contagious.
It does not feel like it, but we are winning the war against ObamaCare.
You may feel like the political system is broken and the Democrats are not listening to the voters. You feel that way because it is true, the Democrats are not listening. But that does not mean the bill will not die — because it turns out that the two Independent Senators are listening.
Clearly, the Democratic Senate leadership and the White House put so much pressure on the so-called moderate Senators to win this one vote to proceed to the bill, they created a political mirage that the bill’s chances are strong. But they are not. The bill is very brittle, and when it implodes, it will shatter.
As the bill stands right now, the Democrats cannot pass it. They cannot get to 60 votes on the vote to end the filibuster of the bill.
If they try to take the public option out, Senator Sanders and others (Burris, Brown and Franken) are threatening to vote against ending the filibuster. If they keep the public option in, then Senator Lieberman has threatened to vote against ending the filibuster. Either way — public option in or out — the bill dies. And Senator Sanders is not going to agree to any co-oped-trigger-opt-out compromise on the public option.
Is it any surprise that the two Independent Senators have put the Senate in this position? They are listening to the public, and are playing a role that no single Democratic Senator has the courage to play — you know, listen to your voters.
Turns out the moderates like Senators Lincoln, Landrieu and Nelson are now viewed by their voters as servants of Senator Reid and the White House. They destroyed all their work to try and get their voters to see them as something other than liberal Democrats who will just spend and tax and spend. This was the highest price Senator Reid paid to win the vote to proceed to the bill: he has forced the so-called moderate Senators look like lap-dogs.
Senator Landrieu and Senator Lincoln have announced they would give their vote to Senator Reid and the White House to allow ObamaCare to the Senate floor.
For the group of U.S. Senators up in 2010 — the ones facing the independent voters that turned 2:1 against the Democrats in the New Jersey and Virginia elections — they will each be tagged all election cycle with providing the one vote needed for ObamaCare to come before the Senate. They could have stopped it, but they did not.
The vote on cloture on the motion to proceed needs 60 votes, and therefore every Democratic Senator and every Democratic Independent can be accurately accused of providing the winning vote for Senator Reid to proceed to the very unpopular bill.
This message, I am certain, will make it into campaign commercials in 2010.
Below is a list of the Democratic Senators up in 2010, and the email contact links for each of their offices:
From a reliable staffer:
Phone calls are not going through at all now. Try calling my phone or any phone. It is not even the switchboard anymore. The entire Senate phone system has collapsed.
Keep melting the phones!
Michael E. Hammond is one of three mentors I have been lucky enough to work for during my career. When I worked for him, he was the General Counsel of the U.S. Senate Steering Committee. He has run for Congress twice in New Hampshire and is now the General Counsel of Gun Owners for America. He is one of the two smartest political strategists I know. He is brilliant, a genius (literally, scored perfect on his SAT.) And the only thing I know about his work in the Army is he cannot talk about it.
REDSTATE WEB EXCLUSIVE
November 19, 2009
MEMORANDUM
FROM: Michael Hammond
RE: The Reid Bill: The Mandates, Public Option,
Regulation, Rationing, and Taxes
EDITORS NOTE
Harry Reid’s objective has been to secret the provisions of the most important piece of legislation in our lifetimes until he could cram it down Americans’ throats because there was insufficient time to analyze and mobilize against it. To some extent, he has succeeded. I have done what I could, given the need to disseminate this at least a day before the Senate moved to cloture on the motion to proceed. I have therefore focused on the mandates, the public option, regulation, rationing, and taxes.
Keep up the calls!
Quoting the email:
CIO Customer Service Bulletin – Problem Notification —
Assistant Sergeant at Arms; Chief Information OfficerDate: November 20, 2009
Time: 11:30 AM
Affected Service: TelephonesProblem/Symptom/Status: We are experiencing a high volume of calls which is having an impact on call transfers and voice mail. We are continuing to monitor the situation. Whenever possible offices are encouraged to retrieve and delete messages from the voice mail system throughout the day and evening.
Affected Location(s): All
Master Ticket Opened: No
Estimated Time to Restore: Unknown
HOE-HOE-HOE, oh, it’s not Christmas — yet. But Harry Reid is playing the sit-on-my-lap-Santa to lap-dog Senator Mary Landrieu, with a $100 million surprise. (They look so cute.)
Why not buy Senator Landrieu for $100 million, since the United States is electronically creating $1 trillion a year to finance our debt, what’s another $100 million?
When the crash comes, this is will be Exhibit A of how the Democrats do not care about your tax money, how they are greedy and irresponsible with public monies and why they cannot be trusted with their hands on the U.S. currency printing press. They cannot say no. They keep spending and spending and spending and they will never stop.
Aside from the moral and financial implications of this sorid tale — the politics of it make little sense.
(Here is the let me get this straight moment:) giving Mary Landrieu $100 million for Medicaid (the Federal and State funded program to provide health care to the low-income) will help her politically because (please take the multiple choice quiz below):
a) Medicaid voters will have voted against her in the 2010 mid-term election, this will help with that wavering constituency;
b) Medicaid voters make up the independents and moderate Democrats and Republican voters who oppose the health bill;
c) Medicaid voters who left the state after Katrina by the hundreds of thousands, have moved back to Louisiana;
d) None of the above.
And the answer is d), none of the above.
This $100 million is the cover story for her yes vote, and she will no longer be a U.S. Senator, since the demographics of Louisiana have changed so profoundly, and the vast majority of voters who have left are Democrats.
The prayers of her Republican opponent have been answered — she is going to vote YES.
Good-bye Senator Landrieu.
So what is up with the Senate rules, anyway? What does Senator Reid have to do to pass ObamaCare?
And why does he need to get 60 votes twice — even before he a) gets to consider any health care bill on the Senate floor, and b) before he can have a vote on final passage.
And what about the whole reading of the bill, that Senator Coburn is threatening?
Filbusternomics 101 (to all you typo and grammar police — I made up the word):
The first rule of the U.S. Senate is that the institution runs on the rule of unanimous consent. The U.S. Senate can operate under any type of rules or any procedures, provided there is unanimous consent.
Second, the most powerful words on the floor of the U.S. Senate are “Mr. President, I object.”
Objecting to any unanimous consent agreement immediately forces the U.S. Senate to operate under its rules, which can be changed only by a two-thirds of the body voting in the affirmative vote.
The next biggest step up the escalation ladder is the filibuster — which the Republicans are going to do to ObamaCare.
A filibuster is when a Senator speaks at length. He or she monopolizes the Senate floor. Senators who are filibustering have been known to read the phone books. A Senator could read anything, a 2,078 page bill, for example.
There will be a filibuster of the motion to proceed. The motion to proceed is a debatable motion to determine if the U.S. Senate wants to debate the bill that the motion is allowing the Senate to proceed to consider, in this case, it may be either the House passed ObamaCare bill, or another House passed tax bill that the Senate will proceed to consider — then strike and insert the merged ObamaCare bill.
In order for the Senate to even consider the House passed ObamaCare bill or another House passed tax bill that they want to use as a shell for the merged Senate bill — Senator Reid needs 60 votes to stop the filibuster of the motion to proceed.
If Senator Reid loses one Democratic or Independent Senator, the motion to proceed fails, and Senator Reid goes back to the back rooms to try again. Likely with Exhibit A (the failed vote) for the hard-core leftists and liberals about why they need to make compromises or they will get nothing. (In general, all the Democrats up this year would probably be very pleased to see the cloture vote on the motion to proceed fail, since they would avoid many tough, walk-the-plank-type votes. Should one Democratic Senator vote against cloture on the motion to proceed, then likely others will too, since Senator Reid will lose the vote, regardless of whether any other Senator votes yes, so, its a free no vote.)
If every Democratic and Independent Senator votes for cloture on the motion to proceed, then the Senate will begin consideration of the ObamaCare legislation, and the debate could last two or three or four weeks.
The next 60 vote event is the cloture motion on the filibuster of the bill itself. Think of this as a filibuster which prevents a final vote on the bill, without first a 60 vote margin to clear. To repeat, there can be no final vote on the bill until another cloture vote occurs, which again takes 60 votes. Should cloture on the bill fail (Senator Reid does not get 60 votes) then the bill fails, and Senator Reid could try again, but usually, that is not the case. And in this case, having another vote will be very unpopular with the U.S. Senators (you mean I have to walk the plank, again?)
The conventional wisdom is that if there is a public option, then Senator Lieberman will vote against cloture on the bill (not on the motion to proceed) and the bill will fail. This is how you get to four weeks on the Senate floor, with the Democratic Leadership attempting to manage changes to the bill by unanimous consent or through votes on amendments. On the other hand, there are key things in the bill or which may be added to the bill which do or could create huge divisions among the Democrats — the public option, tax increases, Medicare cuts, second amendment rights amendments (guns), immigration and abortion, for starters.
So the entire bill, should the Senate actually begin to consider it, will look and feel like a rugby scrum, often violent, sometimes bloody and very chaotic. But for rugby players, oh, so much fun!
Now, there has been much ado about the threat by Senator Coburn to force the reading of the bill, which he says he will do. This is a classic delay tactic that any Senator can use, and can not be stopped.
One of the many alerts that went out today from Gun Owners of America:
This is Crunch Time on ObamaCare
– Urge Senator Evan Bayh to tell Harry Reid “I’m not your puppet!”
Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
http://gunowners.org/ordergoamem.htm
Thursday, November 19, 2009
This week will be as important as any week in our lifetime in determining whether the anti-gun health care bill moves forward.
As a result of the mandates in the Senate bill, all of your gun-related health data can be dumped into a government database that was created in section 13001 of the stimulus bill. This includes any firearms-related information your doctor has gleaned . . . or any determination of PTSD, or something similar, that can preclude you from owning firearms.
The vote this week will be on shutting down a Republican filibuster of the bill. And the key votes will be five Democrats: Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and your very own Evan Bayh of Indiana.
The Senate and the House have a great tradition of conservative Democrats: Democratic Senators Jim Allen of Alabama, Harry Byrd, Jr., of Virginia, and (former Democratic) Congressman Virgil Goode of Virginia were, in their day, as pro-gun and fiscally responsible as any Republican.
The question is whether any conservative or even “moderate” Democrats survive, or whether we are left with a bunch of cowards who will do whatever their leftist leadership demands of them.
In the House, every evidence is that the so-called “Blue Dog Democrats” were nothing but a stable of Pelosi puppets. The Blue Dogs whined and complained about the deficit spending created by the bill, but when push came to shove, Pelosi was able to get just enough of the supposedly moderate Democrats to do her bidding and support her bill.
Is this the case in the Senate as well?
1) The “moderate” Democrats in the Senate have demanded seventy-two hours to examine any legislative language — and a CBO assessment based on final legislative language. They will not get this before this week’s vote. The question is whether they were serious.
2) The “moderate” Democrats in the Senate have demanded a bill which does not send the deficit spiraling into the stratosphere. The Reid bill will add over a hundred billion dollars to the deficit, when you consider the $210-247 Medicare “fix” Reid is trying to sneak through on separate legislation. It will add over A HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS TO THE DEFICIT IF YOU DISCOUNT THE PHONY MEDICARE “CUTS.” Was the promise worth the paper it was written on?
3) The “moderate” Democrats have promised a bill which will not tax the middle class. But the Reid bill will impose enormous costs and taxes -– not only on the middle class, but on the sick and elderly.
This is a week in which a handful of senators will make history. Will they be heroes and champions? Or liars and cowards? We will see.
They are being told that this is their chance to “make history.” But history seldom rewards those who break their word because they are frightened of their masters.
ACTION: Write Senator Evan Bayh. Tell him to vote against “cloture” on the “motion to proceed” to the Senate ObamaCare bill.
You can contact Senator Bayh by going to his webform at:
http://bayh.senate.gov/contact/email
—– Pre-written letter —–
Dear Senator Bayh:
This week will be as important as any week in our lifetime in determining whether the anti-gun health care bill moves forward.
As a result of the mandates in the Senate bill, all my gun-related health data can be dumped into a government database that was created in section 13001 of the stimulus bill. This includes any firearms-related information your doctor has gleaned . . . or any determination of PTSD, or something similar, that can preclude you from owning firearms.
The vote this week will be on shutting down a Republican filibuster of the motion to bring the bill up –- “cloture” on the “motion to proceed.”
The Senate and the House have a great tradition of conservative Democrats. The question is whether any conservative or even “moderate” Democrats will remain independent, or whether they will just do whatever their leftist leadership demands of them.
In the House, every evidence is that the so-called “Blue Dog Democrats” were nothing but a stable of Pelosi puppets. And the only question was which ones Pelosi would choose to dance at the end of their strings, and which would be allowed to lie crumpled up in the corner.
Is this the case in the Senate as well?
1) You have demanded seventy-two hours to examine any legislative language — and a CBO assessment based on final legislative language. You will not get this before this week’s vote. The question is whether you were serious.
2) You have demanded a bill which does not send the deficit spiraling into the stratosphere. The Reid bill will add over a hundred billion dollars to the deficit, when you consider the $210-247 Medicare “fix” Reid is trying to sneak through on separate Legislation (S. 1776).
It will add over A HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS TO THE DEFICIT IF YOU DISCOUNT THE PHONY MEDICARE “CUTS.” Was your promise worth the paper it was written on?
3) You have promised a bill which will not tax the middle class. But the Reid bill will impose enormous costs and taxes -– not only on the middle class, but on the sick and elderly. Did you mean what you said?
This is a week in which you will make history. Will you be a hero and a champion? Or a Reid puppet? I have faith that you will live up to your calling.
You are being told that this is your chance to “make history.” But history seldom rewards cowards who break their word because they are frightened by their “masters.”
Please, show me and the people who elected you that you are the hero we elected you to be. Vote against “cloture” on the anti-gun health care bill.
From “Circling Sharks Smell American Blood:”
“Our dollar is crashing, while the price of gold is soaring. The budget deficit has never been worse - and the president wants to float even more debt for health-care and energy initiatives.
“By the end of this presidential term, we may add another $9 trillion to our already astronomical $11 trillion debt. Unemployment has already topped 10 percent. This quarter’s trade deficit reached a near-historic high. Our debtors and oil exporters talk of scrapping the dollar as the common international currency.
“American hesitation abroad reflects the shaky economic news. In Afghanistan, we can’t decide whether to seek victory or admit defeat — or simply vote present by keeping the status quo. President Obama reached out to enemies like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. But so far they remain unimpressed, despite his apologizing for an assortment of supposed past American sins.”
Sen. Lieberman is setting steel rebar and hardened concrete around his threat to filibuster the public option.
“It’s classic politics of our time that if you look at the campaign last year, presidential, you can’t find a mention of public option,” Lieberman said. “It was added after the election as a part of what we normally consider health insurance reform — insurance market reforms, cover people, cover people who are not covered.”
“It suddenly becomes a litmus test. I thought Democrats were against litmus tests.”
The Lieberman filibuster bunker has hardened, and Senator Reid can’t breech it.
And you know what that means, right? Lets all say it together, Senator Reid has to throw the public option left wingers like Senators Franken, Brown, Burris and Rockefeller over the side, who are pounding their chest and the table about the absolute need for the public option.
These public-option-in-the-sky Senators will not like being tossed over the side.
The question is, as Senator Reid throws them overboard, will they plead for a fig-leaf public option deal? Essentially, will they ask to only be thrown mostly overboard (for those Monty Python er, Princess Bride fans, it’s like being mostly dead) or will they grab Senator Reid and take him with him as they go, just over the principle of the public option, and because they don’t like being thrown overboard?
There is going to be pushing and shoving on the deck of the USS Public Option, and I’ll be reporting the splashes, as they happen. (Grab the popcorn.)
James Pethokoukis of Reuters is at it again, subversion-via-blog.
So in the little sit down with the President, the Chinese made clear they did not believe a word of the President’s promises about ObamaCare not adding to the deficit.
The Chinese asked uncomfortable questions about the cost of ObamaCare:
Guess what? It turns out the Chinese are kind of curious about how President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform plans would impact America’s huge fiscal deficit. Government officials are using his Asian trip as an opportunity to ask the White House questions. Detailed questions.
Boilerplate assurances that America won’t default on its debt or inflate the shortfall away are apparently not cutting it. Nor should they, when one owns nearly $2 trillion in assets denominated in the currency of a country about to double its national debt over the next decade.
Turns out that when you lie to everyone, no one believes you. Untrue claims that President Obama makes in the speeches to Joint Sessions of Congress about not adding to the deficit, making mystery cuts to Medicare, or not funding abortion, or not allowing illegal immigrants to gain access to his health care benefit, are actually listened to by other nations.
And the economic implications and the national security implications of a President who no one believes are profound, and none of them are good.
Sounds like the Chinese do not believe that a Democratic Congress and President Obama will do anything about the growing deficit. The only thing the Trillion-dollar President can do is spend more Trillions — first on the stimulus, then another trillion plus on health care. And because the world refuses to buy more of our debt, the Fed has printed (you guessed it) a trillion dollars in the last year to give to banks, with instructions to buy our T-Bills in our debt (rigged) “auctions.” This is how we are paying for our deficit, we are printing money. And our Trillion dollar President keeps spending.
The rational reaction of the Chinese (as opposed to the irrational action of spending a trillion dollars on health care) reminds me of a sign I saw at the 9/12 demonstration:
For those attempting to figure out what is in the Senate ObamaCare bill, you are in the company of 99 U.S. Senators who have not seen the bill. At least that is what today’s New York Times is reporting:
“frustration has been growing among some lawmakers over the delay, especially as they are asked repeated questions about a bill they have not yet seen.
“I don’t think the bill text is being shown to anybody,” Mr. [Senator] Nelson said last week.”
According to CNN: “In fact, no one has seen the Senate bill.”
They a have a phrase out West for this — all hat, no cattle.
I call it a vapor bill — all hype, no bill.
Dem Senators are peeling off of President Obama’s government takeover of health care and its liberal fantasy land that spends more than a trillion and contains hundreds of billions in new taxes.
As James Carville told CNN, President Obama only has 57 votes.
Reuters James Pethokoukis is reporting that Senators Liberman, Landrieu and Nelson are at NO, and Bayh maybe too. Pethokoukis is reporting the same thing Hammond said in his memo, that reconciliation is a no-go. (Politico is reporting, correctly, that reconciliation rules would strip the Stupak amendment.)
As we all know, no 60 votes, no laundry. (Senator Reid needs 60 votes to break the filibuster on the motion to proceed to consider the bill. If he does not get 60 votes, ObamaCare never comes up on the Senate floor.)
There are whispers in Washington watering holes that some Dem Senators are quietly hoping Senator Nelson will vote against cloture on the motion to proceed. This will let the Senators who are up in 2010 off the hook from the nightmare of proceeding to this politically toxic bill.
Michael E. Hammond is one of three mentors I have been lucky enough to work for during my career. When I worked for him he was the General Counsel of the U.S. Senate Steering Committee, he has run for Congress twice in New Hampshire and is now the General Counsel of Gun Owners for America. He is one of the two smartest political strategists I know. He is brilliant, a genius. Enjoy:
WEB EXCLUSIVE FOR REDSTATERS
November 13, 2009
MEMORANDUM
FROM: Michael Hammond
RE: Where We Are on ObamaCare
AN OVERVIEW OF WHERE WE ARE
At the beginning of this process last spring, I identified a four-step strategy to defeat ObamaCare: (1) Back Chuck Grassley and Mike Enzi away from a deal which gives Democrats 90% of what they want. (2) Take reconciliation off the table. (3) Secure 41 Senate votes. (4) Use procedural roadblocks to prevent Harry Reid from playing “let’s make a deal” on the Senate floor.
We have accomplished the first three of these four objectives. Negotiations have collapsed, and Senate Republicans are unified. Reconciliation is off the table. We have 41 votes against the Reid bill. And the final step -– the Senate floor procedure –- is wholly within our control.
It would have been a gratuitous unexpected blessing if we had won in a way we had never anticipated –- if the Pelosi-puppet “Blue Dog Democrats” had refused to give Pelosi the 218 votes she needed to prevail in the House. We hoped –- but didn’t really expect –- that the Pelosi puppets would show courage, but they didn’t.
Now, with the American people opposing ObamaCare by a 54-to-42% margin in the most recent poll –- and with 40% of the opponents feeling strongly –- and with those figures being much more dramatic when you move away from a handful of “90% blue” east coast/west coast cities -– the outcome of the battle teeters on a knife’s edge, as it has always done since the beginning of the year.
WHAT WE NEED TO DO
First, we need to keep pounding Maine, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Indiana, and Connecticut. Secondary targets include North Dakota, Nevada, and Montana.
Dem irrational behavior on health care continues — Senator Reid wants to decrease Medicare by half a trillion, and increase the Medicare payroll tax.
From today’s New York Times: “Reid Mulls Medicare Tax Increase.”
Uh, huh. (Dem Lemmings Unite!)
When are the Democrats going to start cracking some heads over those who have been egging them off the cliff called health care reform?
Answer: when they lose some elections.
Oh, they did lose elections in VA and NJ — only twice in the history of Virgina has the GOP taken all three top state positions, and this is one of those two times. And the exit polls show the independents voting for the GOP by a 2 to 1 margin in both NJ and VA.
After the Dems lost these elections, they barely passed health care reform out of the House. And still Sen. Reid and the White House and the House Leadership will not change their pass-health-care mantra.
What is ironic is the Dems have been down this road before, with President Clinton — and they somehow believe that a farther left reform with a government run health insurance plan is going to make everything politically better. But even in Ohio and Connecticut polls show that it is not going to be OK.
The Dems won’t discipline those who got them to this politically painful place because the Democratic party’s pursuit of health care reform is not politically rational. They are all collectively putting their hand in the flame, and will not pull it out.
“A majority of likely voters (72%) believe that a modern American electoral tradition will hold and the President’s party will lose seats in the upcoming 2010 Congressional elections. Forty-one percent of likely voters believe the Democrats will lose seats, but not the majority in either the House of Representatives or the Senate while nearly one-third (31%) believe Congressional Democrats will lose at least one of their two majorities.
“Only 5% believe Republicans will lose seats in the 2010 elections and 14% say it will be a close election and there will not be a major shift either way. Even a majority of Democrats surveyed (56%) believe their party will lose seats in the election, while a majority of Republicans (54%) believe they will gain the majority in at least one house of Congress.”
Robert Costa has written an interesting piece about the many things that could kill ObamaCare in the U.S. Senate.
It’s true, the patient known as ObamaCare is looking blue and convulsing on the table as Senators Reid and Durbin wonder what to do about these many symptoms (per Costa):
1. Time. Costa does not say it, but Senator Coburn is threatening to have the bill read, front to back, all 2,000 pages, prior to each amendment. Hmmm. Costa’s point is time is on the side of ObamaCare’s death by thousands of pages of text.
2. President Obama. Can you say radioactive and toxic for moderate Dems running for re-election — Costa — didn’t say that, I am taking some liberties.
3. GOP Amendments. Guns and immigration, guns and babies, guns and taxes, guns and spending, guns and Medicare cuts, guns and government control of your health care, guns and health care rationing — did I mention guns? (OK, so Costa did not mention guns.)
4. Abortion. (See entire internet on Stupak.) For extra points, see Senator Nelson (D-NE) and Stupak amendment in the U.S. Senate.
5. The public option. Ah, the liberal’s shimmering holy grail — its right there, but oh, I think I see it — but it is elusive isn’t it — See Google for “Senator Lieberman (I-CT) public option.”
Not mentioned by Costa but in play: health care rationing, immigration, death panels, health care databases (guns), privacy, Medicare cuts, taxes and spending.
