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The final outcome of the health care reform debate is uncertain — who can predict where a writhing eel will land? — but we have learned a few things already. First, we know that President Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership could not persuade a majority of Americans of the wisdom of their plan — and have largely ceased to try. As of this writing, a president who seems willing to interrupt prime-time programming on the slightest pretext has not scheduled a speech from the Oval Office to make his final health reform appeal. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is working...

There will be no doubt where lawmakers stand after the dust clears on healthcare, said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, who dismissed the controversy over the so-called Slaughter Solution Tuesday. Republicans are crying foul over a proposed rule that would allow for House passage of the Senate healthcare bill without an actual up-or-down vote. Gibbs called the complaints "a legislative process game."

Health Reform: Using a parliamentary trick ironically known as the "self-executing rule," Democrats plan on passing their massive health bill without voting. In November, they'll learn just how "self-executing" it was. Just when you thought Washington couldn't get more corrupt, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this week seems intent on trampling representative government itself. Unable to get the votes to pass their U.S. health care revolution, she and her fellow Democratic leaders have figured out a way to pass it without a vote. The "self-executing rule" has been "used to adopt concurrent resolutions correcting the enrollment of measures or to make...

Washington (CNN) -- Five more House Democrats said Tuesday that they will vote against Senate health care legislation, which puts opponents of reform just 11 votes shy of the 216 needed to prevent President Obama from scoring a major victory on his top domestic priority. An ongoing CNN analysis shows that opposition in the House to the Senate health care plan has reached 205 members. A total of 27 House Democrats, including nine who supported the House plan in November, have indicated that they would join a unified Republican caucus in opposing the Senate plan, which passed in that chamber...

know you're not going to listen to me. I'm going to say it anyway, because as a concerned citizen of The United States of America, I must. You are making a grave, perhaps nation-ending mistake. Attempting to "deem" the Health Care bill passed when it has not actually been voted on is not Constitutional. Article 1, Section 7: There are millions of Americans who are extraordinarily pissed off right now. Some of them, like me, write scathing columns on The Internet or we rant on Talk Radio and Television (such as Judge Napolitano) But some just smolder. Some remember the...

According to the Washington Post, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi now plans to use the "deem and pass" strategy to push through the Senate's healthcare reform bill. The strategy would ask for a House vote on a number of reconciliation fixes to the bill. A passing vote on the reconciliation package--which has been more popular among House members than the bill itself--would then "deem" the Senate bill passed, even without a direct vote on the actual legislation. Critics like Thomas Jefferson Street blogger Peter Roff question the legitimacy of the process. Bloleague Robert Schlesinger thinks it's just silly. Pelosi,...

Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday continued to project optimism that [she] could find enough votes to pass health-care legislation, as Republicans hammered them for the process they plan to use to pass the legislation. ... A cost estimate of the legislation has yet to be released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which is likely to push a vote on the legislation into the weekend. Asked about the delay in unveiling the cost estimate and the legislation itself, Pelosi said that "the numbers have to add up" before any text is released. ... House Democrats' plans to deem the Senate bill...

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Deemocrats Mocked: Deem and pass strategy #deemed worthy of a hash-tag By Garance Franke-Ruta The proposed House "deem and pass" vote strategy is already facing one of the most insidious enemies of contemporary political discourse: online mockery. Perhaps because of the resemblance of the phrase to #demonsheep, a hashtag given to a recent bewildering California U.S. Senate race ad, the deem and pass legislative procedure has been given one of its own by opponents on Twitter, where wits and wags have decided that they can play this game at home and #deem things done just by declaring them so. Some...

Even as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scrambles for the 216 "yes" votes she needs to pass President Obama's health care reform bill, strategists on both sides of the partisan divide have begun to debate the political impact of what passage will mean. All sides agree that the overall bill is not particularly popular at the moment. Republicans ascribe that unpopularity to the fact that people know what's in the bill and don't like or want it. Democrats see the current poll numbers as evidence that they have lost the message war in the run-up to passage but once the bill...

http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0310/Hoyer_Dems_dont_have_the_votes.html http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/hoyer-defends-controversial-house-procedure/ http://thehill.com/homenews/house/87047-gop-to-try-to-stop-slaughter-solution

The Tea Party protests against the health care reform efforts on Capitol Hill today were smaller than previous efforts -- a rough CBS News estimate puts the total number of protesters around 600 -- but that doesn't mean there weren't fireworks. The video at left shows what happened when the protesters reached the office of Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat. As you can see, as one protester complains of arrogance and uncomfortable-looking young staffers survey the scene, the office door is closed, prompting chants of "liar" from the group outside. The apparent ringleader of the group is then encouraged...

Yesterday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) endorsed the rumored Slaughter Rule to send the Senate passed Obamacare bill to the President without a direct up-or-down vote in the House. Don’t believe those on the left who are trying to argue that because Republicans used deeming resolutions when they were in power, it is ok for Democrats to use a similar tactic to pass legislation without a vote. Under this procedure, the House would vote on a rule setting up debate. The House would then skip a vote on the Senate passed version of Obamacare and move directly to...

During the height of the Cold War, some feared the communists would take over the United States without firing a shot. Could it be that nearly a half-century later, we're on the verge of that becoming a reality? President Barack Obama and Democratic congressmen won their respective elections -- no shots were fired -- and they are feverishly attempting to dismantle this nation's institutions, brick by brick. The American people are getting a bird's-eye view of what the left, which completely dominates the Democratic Party, thinks of the Constitution, freedom and the right of the people to self-governance. The people...

President Obama made another stop on his health care road show in Strongsville, Ohio this afternoon, making the rather odd case that the American people don't want their representatives to look at polls measuring what people want. Wrapping up his speech, Obama said: “The American people want to know if it’s still possible for Washington to look out for their interests. For their future. So what they’re looking for is some courage. They’re waiting for us to act. They’re waiting for us to lead. They don’t want us putting our finger out to the wind. They don’t want us reading...

It’s very fair to send people who disregard the federal mandate to buy health insurance to prison, Nancy Pelosi says, because otherwise they’ll assault citizens … with a bill for medical services … or something. Apparently, the occasionally unhealthy have become such a security risk that we need to imprison them for opting to pay their own way. Infidels Are Cool has the key exchange::

Both the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade energy approved earlier this year and the version just okayed by Sen. Barbara Boxer’s Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Democrats (Republicans boycotted the vote) contains an obscure but nasty bureaucratic provision that requires President Obama to act like Venezuelan strong man Hugo Chavez. Here’s how: The bills require a federal declaration of a “climate emergency” if world greenhouse gas levels reach 450 parts per million. Guess what? The Pacific Northwest National Lab says it is a virtual certainty that level will be reached within a few months. The bill then requires the president to “direct...

Mr. Obama said, “penalties are appropriate for people who try to free ride the system and force others to pay for their health insurance.”

Advice For Obama: Knock Heads On Health Care He 'could take a few pages from Lyndon Johnson's book,' says Rep. Conyers WASHINGTON - The most senior African-American in Congress offered some unsolicited advice Monday to President Barack Obama on how to get his signature health care bill through a balky Senate: knock their heads together. "The president could take a few pages from Lyndon Johnson's book ... and start knocking heads together," said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Conyers, who spoke to reporters in Detroit, first came to Congress in 1965, the year Medicare and...