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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made a deal with Rep. Bart Stupak in order to secure his vote and that of other anti-choice Democrats for the health care bill, which is scheduled to be voted on this Sunday. According to a member of Congress who was briefed on the matter, Pelosi has agreed to let Stupak have a vote on his amendment, which instructs the Senate to substitute his language for the Senate language on abortion. FDL has obtained a copy of the concurrent resolution (PDF1, PDF2, PDF3, PDF4), which includes cosponsors Marion Berry, Sanford Bishop, Joseph Cao, Kathy Dahlkemper,...

The discussion over what parliamentary procedures will be used in reconciling the House and Senate versions of healthcare legislation is a pivotal -- but not the final -- factor in the process. Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles The House Rules Committee meets Saturday morning as Democrats kick off a weekend of parliamentary maneuvering, lobbying and arm-twisting in the healthcare debate ahead of showdown votes set for Sunday. President Obama will meet in the afternoon with House Democrats and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, about 24 hours before the House is set to begin voting on a healthcare insurance overhaul,...

Remind them of their Oath of Office. I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God. It doesn't say they are taking an oath to uphold Obama's desires. They take an oath to the Constitution. If...

Yesterday, I decided to call Rep. John Garamendi’s (CA-10) office in Washington, D.C. He’s my representative and I wanted to voice my opposition to the Senate Health Care Bill. I spoke with a female staffer and politely told her that, while I support health care reform, I oppose the Senate Bill because it wasn’t true “reform.” She said the Congressman thinks it’s a good bill and that he campaigned on health care reform. I told her I knew that. I also mentioned that I voted for him. When I tried to give her specific reasons why the Senate Bill would...

Not even President Barack Obama could sway U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch from voting against a health-care reform package now headed for a dramatic weekend showdown. After emerging from a 40-minute Oval Office meeting this afternoon with Obama and a White House aide, Lynch (D-South Boston) said he was not persuaded and made it official: “I am firmly a ‘no’ vote.” The Herald first reported today that Lynch, one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s floor whips, was likely to vote against a Senate version of health-care reform, even though the congressman supported a House reform package last year. Lynch, who has...

Some 55 per cent of Americans oppose the health care reforms now being considered, while 35 percent favor them, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday. In addition, just over half of voters – some 53 percent - think House Democrats are “changing the rules” to get the legislation passed while 31 percent think they are playing by the rules. The level of public support for health care overhaul has remained fairly steady since last July, Fox News reported, with 36 favoring it last summer compared with 35 percent now. But the number opposed – 55 percent – is...

The Obama space policy that would cancel the Constellation space exploration program and commercialize space flight has run into trouble in Congress and with the public. But now it looks like Obamaspace has a new threat to it. The threat may be President Barack Obama himself. There are at least two stories in the media that suggest that President Obama would be willing to trade away all or part of Obamaspace in return for votes on health care reform

Before signing a jobs bill, President Obama trumpeted the Congressional Budget Office's estimate Thursday that health care reform legislation would make deep cuts in the deficit over the next 20 years. "This morning, a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office concludes that the reform we seek would bring 1.3 trillion dollars in deficit reduction over the next two decades," he said. "That makes this legislation the most significant effort to reduce deficits since the Balanced Budget Act in the 1990s. This is but one virtue of a reform that will bring new accountability to the insurance industry and greater...

March 16th Leonard Boswell sent out a press release on why he supports health insurance reform quoting President Theodore Roosevelt saying “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain difficult…” He goes on and says, “[f]or nearly 100 years, we as a country have recognized that there is a need to reform our health care system, but have instead let partisan bickering and politicking trump the health and well-being of our loved ones… “…It will address the fact that medical expenses are the number one cause of bankruptcy in this country… “…My priority...

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) is the Liberal Lion of the US Senate. The longest serving member of that institution, he has been a champion of big government and spending programs for years. He is also a philosophical ally of President Obama, an ally who has been at odds with that President.

PHILADELPHIA – The Department of Veterans Affairs was fined $227,500 after incorrect radiation doses were given to 97 veterans with prostate cancer at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center, a federal agency announced Wednesday. (Article excerpted per Yahoo's rule).

WASHINGTON — Buyers, beware: President Barack Obama says his health care overhaul will lower premiums by double digits, but check the fine print. Premiums are likely to keep going up even if the health care bill passes, experts say. If cost controls work as advertised, annual increases would level off with time. But don't look for a rollback. Instead, the main reason premiums would be more affordable is that new government tax credits would help cover the cost for millions of people. Listening to Obama pitch his plan, you might not realize that's how it works. Visiting a Cleveland suburb...

On his television program Monday night, Glenn Beck highlighted the subjugation of "faith, hope, and charity" by the Left to gain support for contrived rights like universal healthcare. Sob stories are utilized to leverage proper emotional response toward improper governmental action. Underlying this theater is the fundamental principle articulated in the Declaration of Independence. "All men are created equal... endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." At work in our society today is a wholly contradictory position, articulated last December by Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, and revisted Monday by Beck. What [the healthcare] bill does is... We take...

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...

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,...

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not planning to recognize such a result as legally binding. I’m not going to pretend to obey any dictates from federal health-care bureaucrats that have never been authorized by a constitutional vote of both houses of Congress. I will not submit to any extra-constitutional order to dismantle the consumer-driven health plan I have set up for my employees. I will not comply. If the government tries to make me comply, I’ll sue. And I’ll win. This is not (yet) a banana republic where constitutions are seen as inconvenient impediments to...

Throughout the debate on health care reform, which is poised to culminate this week in a House vote on the Senate bill, progressive commentators have pointed to the precedents of Social Security and Medicare to justify their agenda. A government takeover of health care is no more socialist than these previous programs, they say, and is therefore as American as apple pie. "America has been a social welfare state for a long time," wrote Daniel Weingartner in a University of Tennessee publication. "During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security bill into law, giving assistance to...

(English-language translation) SAN JUAN – Senator Eduardo Bhatia publicly called on Governor Luis Fortuño on Monday to reveal which Republican congressmen support including Puerto Rico in federal healthcare reform. The demand comes in the wake of another trip by the Governor to the federal capital and following unsuccessful efforts and multiple trips by the Governor to secure Puerto Rico's inclusion in the largest public-health program to be considered in Washington since the creation of Medicare. “Fortuño is a Republican only for his own convenience. After months of cheap talk and ridiculous threats against President Barack Obama, what the Governor has...

Mr. President, There is no doubt America is in need of major health care reform. With a reported 47 million people without health insurance, the status quo is not acceptable. Additionally, there are millions more Americans who are underinsured, with health insurance that is inadequate to cover their needs. Families are forced to make tough sacrifices in order to pay medical expenses or make the agonizing choice to go without health care coverage. There are far too many Americans whose financial and physical health is jeopardized by the rising costs of health care. In the coming weeks and months Congress...

Here is my friend Congressman Steve King, who encouraged me to enter this race for Congress in Iowa's 3rd District, telling it like it is on healthcare. (VIDEO)