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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has told colleagues that he was given bad information by the American Medical Association (AMA), which will result in a significant setback to Democrats’ healthcare reform strategy. Democrats are not expected to have the votes to pass a 10-year freeze of scheduled cuts to doctors' Medicare payments, according to sources in both parties. Reid had offered to pass the "doctors' fix" in return for support from the doctors on President Barack Obama's broader healthcare initiative, which is slated for the Senate floor later this year. Reid told colleagues that the AMA said it could...

Under the "health care" heading on the White House Web site, a paragraph reads: "The President has vowed that the health reform process will be different in his Administration – an open, inclusive, and transparent process where all ideas are encouraged and all parties work together to find a solution to the health care crisis." But after dozens of televised hearings, round tables, markups and press conferences, top White House officials are now meeting in the Capitol with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sens. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Max Baucus of Montana, away from Republicans and the press,...

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid is facing intensifying pressure from liberal lawmakers to revive a proposed government insurance plan before health-care reform legislation reaches the Senate floor, amid signs that moderate Democrats may be warming to the idea. Two versions of the "public option" were rejected by the Senate Finance Committee as potentially too great a threat to the insurance industry...But the idea has gained momentum as Democrats look to ensure that the policies Americans would be required to buy would be affordable. A small team of Senate negotiators, led by Reid, is crafting a blueprint for reform that...

So, President Obama has demanded that health care reform not add "even one penny to the deficit". At the same time, the president is struggling to keep as many of the stakeholders (read special interest groups) on board. Two very important groups are the doctors and their representing group, the American Medical Association. A so called pet project of the AMA is the "doctor fix". This is a plan to subsidize doctors that serve Medicare patients from facing drastic cuts to their fees. Instead, Reid is negotiating with the AMA and Senate and House leaders to rollback about 20% in...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is prepared to run a sharply negative campaign if that’s what it takes to win reelection next year, with a top adviser predicting that the Nevada Democrat will “vaporize” his Republican challengers with attack ads. Trailing in the polls and under constant attack from the GOP, Reid’s campaign has just launched a warm-and-fuzzy million-dollar ad campaign to reintroduce the veteran senator to his constituents. But Reid’s team also wants to be the one that introduces lesser-known opponents to the electorate — and will be ready, when the time comes, to unleash a torrent of ads...

It’s way too early to start predicting the results of next year’s mid-term elections. But Democrats are already quaking in their boots. Remember all those breathless predictions of the Democratic party being in power for a zillion years? We’re not hearing those now. True, the Republican party isn’t exactly everyone’s favourite political brand right now but GOP tails are up because the Barack Obama stardust has already disappeared and those Democrats who were wondering a few months ago whether the new prez was a Ronald Reagan or a Jimmy Carter are reluctantly conceding that it looks like the latter. Among...

Was it so long ago that Obama promised "no more secrecy?"The Senate Finance Committee finally put their bill online (PDF). Printed out it comes to 1502 pages. That must be a record. But the real story is that this 1502 page bill is nothing but a smokescreen behind which Obama and Senate Majority Leader Reid are hiding as they work in secret to craft the real bill that will voted on in the U.S. Senate. It may very well be that a "public option" which would lead to a federal takeover of health care could be in that bill. The...

Politics: Move over, John McCain and Olympia Snowe. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is fast becoming the Democrats' favorite Republican as he partners with John Kerry to push cap-and-trade through the Senate. Earlier this year, eight Republican congressmen made it possible for Waxman-Markey, the 1,400-page job- and economy-killing cap-and-trade legislation, to barely pass the House of Representatives. At the time it seemed dead on arrival in the Senate if it was brought up there this year. Once again, as with their medical plan, the Democrats seek to better the odds by putting a GOP hood ornament on a Democratic clunker....

If Harry Reid decides to use the Senate's "reconciliation" process to ram health care legislation through his chamber and crush a filibuster, then he'll have to reconcile something else: his astounding hypocrisy. The majority leader from Nevada is working behind closed doors to merge health care bills passed by the Senate's health and finance committees. He desperately wants to come up with something that can get 60 votes -- the number needed to halt any attempt by minority Republicans to block a final vote on the massive expansion of federal authority. Although Reid has 60 votes in his caucus, it...

When he was a presidential candidate, Barack Obama promised to make negotiations over healthcare reform an open and transparent process. Now that he's president, the reality is that most of the high-stakes work is being conducted by just three senators behind closed doors. According to the Washington Post, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sens. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Max Baucus, D-Mont., gather in Reid's office to hammer out a merger of competing bills before a Senate vote. The only other people allowed in the room are key aides and Obama's representatives on healthcare reform. More than a year...

Dodd Rejects That Healthcare Bill Is Being Written Behind Closed Doors; Strongly Backs Public OptionBy Christopher Keating October 16, 2009 4:28 PM Sen. Christopher J. Dodd strongly rejected criticism that the highly important healthcare bill is being crafted only by Democrats behind closed doors. Former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, who is challenging Dodd in the 2010 race, and others have complained that the important aspects of the complicated bill are being written without public input. Dodd played a key role in a Senate health committee that passed an earlier version of the bill, which is now being merged with a...

Link only - Housing forecast: Reno market is 'weakest' in country

Health-care reform adds to troubles of Sens. Reid and DoddBy Gail Russell Chaddock Published Fri, Oct 16 2009 9:23 am WASHINGTON, D.C. — Two of the three Democrats charged with producing a Senate healthcare bill to take to the floor - Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut - face tough reelection bids in 2010. Senate leaders are used to being lightening rods. But the overhaul of the US healthcare system sets up a perfect storm of competing interests, especially for Democrats. As leader of a 60-member majority, Senator Reid has the votes to...

Health Care: Democrats seem set to use the "nuclear option" to ram their government health takeover into law. Bipartisanship already looked dead; now it looks extinct. The health care revolution the Democratic Congress has planned — with its inevitable medical rationing, thousands of dollars in increased insurance premiums, and coverage of illegal aliens — may get placed on the familiar fast track used to spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars this year. Instead of the 60 votes needed in the Senate if proper parliamentary rules were followed, passing this reshaping of the medical system as a "budget...

Democratic leaders promised when their party regained control of the House three years ago that lawmakers would work five-day weeks, but that plan apparently didn't work. If you want to talk to members of Congress on a Thursday or Friday, don't bother going to Capitol Hill. Try Reagan National Airport, where they've probably already picked up a snack near the boarding gate for their flight back to their home districts.

Watch the video: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/10/15/harry_reid_suggests_health_care_to_cost_2_trillion.html

Join the 135,250 signatures and counting...Sign the Petition below: To President Barack Obama, Majority Leader Harry Reid, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat Members of Congress: The Constitution starts with "WE THE PEOPLE". Our Leaders seem to have forgotten that phrase. American families on a daily basis make hard choices in order to live within their means. Why can't Congress and our federal government do the same? I urge you to work toward balancing the budget.

SENATOR HARRY REID: He talked about CBO saying that there would be $54 billion saved each year if we put caps on medical malpractice and put some restrictions — tort reform — $54 billion. Sounds like a lot of money, doesn’t it, Mr. President? The answer is yes. But remember, we’re talking about $2 trillion, $54 billion compared to $2 trillion. You can do the math. We can all do the math. It’s a very small percent.

In a meeting with gay-rights activists last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid criticized the LDS Church for backing a ballot measure banning same-sex marriage in California, saying the leaders of his faith should have stayed out of the contentious political fight. Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, is the highest ranking elected official who is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.-SNIP-Marchers in Sunday's equality rally, which drew tens of thousands to the U.S. Capitol, repeatedly referenced the Prop 8 defeat in signs, statements and even face paint. But when organizers sat down with Reid,...

There’s no arguing that congressional Democrats are smart not to put their healthcare bills online — After all, more than anyone else, they know that if people learn about everything in those abominations, they might get so riled up as to make last summer’s town halls look like a meeting of the salad nibblers who populate the Nobel Prize literature and peace committees. And abominations the bills truly are, as Democrats insist upon empowering not individuals but the Federal Government (explaining why the Wyden (D-OR)-Bennett (R-Utah) bill had not a snowball’s chance). Not only that but there is this additional...

Bad News: Democrats ready to get dirty despite years of telling US that such tactics alienate the voters!Polls continue to show strength for the GOP in the two hot governor's races to be decided this November in Virginia and New Jersey. In Virginia, Republican Bob McDonnell holds a comfortable lead for governor over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds. With the mud the Democrat Deeds has been slinging his nickname became: "Dirty Deeds." Afraid to talk about the issues, where Virginia voters are increasingly remorseful about the mistake their state made in voting for Obama in 2008, Deeds has launched a campaign...

RUSH: Remember last week I told you how Harry Reid was going to pull a trick on everybody to get the Senate health care bill actually over to the House for conference committee by attaching a merged bill. Two Senate bills -- there's the Harkin committee bill, and there's the Baucus committee bill -- and he's going to take the best parts that he likes, gonna merge them into one bill, and attach them to some other bill that the House has already passed, sent over to the Senate that they haven't acted on yet, and that bill will be...

Do you think Congress should vote on bills without reading them? How about voting on bills that don’t even exist yet, except in fragments? The Senate Finance Committee is poised to vote on a massive health care reform bill on Tuesday allegedly authored by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.). A glaring, outrageous, unreported fact is that the bill’s actual text has been kept secret. No one actually knows what’s in it – not even the senators who will be told to vote for it.

Nevadans say they're ready to replace longtime Democratic incumbent Sen. Harry Reid with an untested Republican. Which Republican? Undecided. But of their top two picks -- former GOP party official Sue Lowden and real estate developer Danny Tarkanian -- either one would unseat Reid if the election were held today, according to a poll commissioned by the Review-Journal. Lowden and Tarkanian are in a statistical tie atop a list of nine primary candidates, according to the survey of Nevada registered voters. The poll by Washington, D.C.-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. shows 23 percent of Republicans favored Lowden to 21...

It's been conventional wisdom forever that health care reform’s brass tacks will be decided in conference committee, where Senate and House negotiators reconcile each chamber's version into one bill. But what if reform could skip conference on the way to the president’s desk?It wasn't a question I’d considered until a former House and Senate leadership aide sent an email sketching out another route to passage. Instead of introducing a Senate bill, Majority Leader Reid could insert the merged health care reform language into a revenue raising House bill already languishing in conference committee. The Senate would pass it and send...

Pittsburgh was treated to an impressive show the week of the recent G20 conference. A nice assortment of military choppers of various types and missions, along with odder aircraft difficult both to identify and explain. Both police and the National Guard were out in force, with downtown nearly sealed off. None of this hardware was used against the "3,000 - 4,000" (more like a few hundred) anarchist demonstrators when they turned their righteous wrath on a dozen Starbucks and a Whole Foods store. No serious confrontation was expected and none occurred. Because all of it - the Guard troops, the...

The President says the Constitution is defective, and now Senator Harry Reid is preparing the coup de grace. Once Reid and Obama emerge from their transparent closed-door consultations on how to blend the two competing Senate Health Care bills, Senator Reid has a nifty parlor trick up his sleeve. The normal course of legislative events would be to debate and vote on the bill on the Senate floor, and then send the result to a House-Senate conference committee. The committee would then blend the final House and Senate bills into a product acceptable to both houses. Unfortunately for the citizens...

WASHINGTON -- Senate leaders on Thursday announced a climactic Finance Committee vote next week on health care legislation, even as Democrats and Republicans kept feuding over its cost and breadth of coverage. Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Finance Committee will vote Tuesday on a 10-year, $829-billion proposal that would expand coverage to 94 percent of eligible Americans-while reducing the federal deficit. A positive cost report on the legislation Wednesday from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office marked a turning point for its main author, Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.

I've spoken often about "puzzle pieces" on a variety of political subjects in my posts. Rarely can we, Joe Q Public, see one news event and piece it into the entire puzzle until someone assembles all the pieces in one place. Thus is the case with the plot for usurping traditional input from the public, and passing a bill reforming remaking America's health care system... with very little cost savings measures included. Yesterday, the puzzle piece assembler happened to be Brian Darling, posting at Heritage Foundation's blog, The Foundry. Yes yes, many of you will say... the *conservative* Heritage Foundation??...

Because of my obsession with the proposed rural water grab (aka Pat's Pipeline), I spend a lot of time out in the cow counties, talking to the folks who live in places like Alamo, Ely and Elko. I can tell you there isn't a lot of love out there for U.S. Sen. Harry Reid. A single handmade sign reading "Anybody Butt Reid" that popped up months ago in Ely has now spread all over White Pine County, and letters to the editors of small town newspapers are almost universally harsh to our senior U.S. Senator. Reid has never fared all...

Sole Control - Sen. Harry Reid will write the bill himself taking pieces of the Baucus vapor bill and the Kennedy "Do it for Ted" bill. This merger will happen with a few chosen people behind tightly closed doors. There will be no hearing, no testimony, no public input.

Scary.

War Strategy: When Bush and Petraeus proposed the surge in Iraq, Democrats demanded that the general testify before Congress. So why has the Senate blocked a similar invitation to our commander in Afghanistan? Those with memories longer than the 24-hour news cycle recall that in the dark days of the Iraq War, David Petraeus was summoned to Washington to explain the surge strategy that would eventually lead to victory in Iraq. Democrats hoped for a show trial. MoveOn.org took out a full-page ad in the New York Times labeling the commanding general of our efforts in Iraq "General Betray-us." Then...

Pelosi's epic eye roll A YouTube of Nancy Pelosi's appearance alongside Harry Reid at the White House yesterday is making the rounds today -- painting a vivid picture of the two leaders' differing approaches to Afghanistan. Pelosi, who has said she's "agnostic" about President Obama's unannounced new strategy, seemed way less than comfortable when the Senate majority leader put his arm around her. Reid then announced: "Madam Speaker, the one thing that I think was interesting is that everyone, Democrats and Republicans, said that, “every decision you make we will support it.” Basically. So we will see." This didn't sit...

Rachel Maddow just said that Democrat Leader(s) in the Senator have told her that Reid will revoke chairmanships of any Senator that sides with Republicans in a filibuster. She's discussing various strategies that the Democrats in the Senate are evaluating. But the first seems to be bullying their own leadership.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is weighing a plan to bring the final health care bill to the floor without a public option -- making it much easier to get the 60 votes needed to prevent a Republican filibuster -- and then adding the provision later as an amendment. The public option amendment would be there waiting, but the 60-vote test would technically be on a bill without the government plan. Then moderate Democrats could drop out for the vote on the public option, which requires just 51 votes for passage. Reid has not revealed whether he will use this...

Harry Reid is going to use a legislative trick to push through the public option without allowing any amendments and skipping a House/Senate conference committee. Reid will use H.R. 1586—a bill passed by the House in March to impose a 90-percent tax on bonuses paid to employees of certain bailed-out financial institutions—as a “shell” for enacting the final version of the Senate’s health care bill, which Reid is responsible for crafting. Under the procedure, the substance of House Resolution 1586 would be removed and replaced with the entire Senate health care package. The maneuver would initially require the support of...

Re-jec-tion. Pelosi does the worm when Majority Leader Harry Reid touches her:

A group of eight Democrats today asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for the health care reform bill to be posted online for 72 hours before a vote on the measure and once again before a vote on the conference report that will meld the House and Senate versions. The senators told Reid that health care reform should be more transparent and easier for their constituents to understand. A CBS poll released last month showed that two-thirds of Americans say the issue is confusing and just 31 percent say they have a clear understanding of what reform will mean for...

Reid ‘Likely’ to Make Entire Health Bill an Amendment to Unrelated Tax Bill That House Passed in March(CNSNews.com) -- A senior aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told CNSNews.com that it is “likely” that Reid will use H.R. 1586—a bill passed by the House in March to impose a 90-percent tax on bonuses paid to employees of certain bailed-out financial institutions—as a “shell” for enacting the final version of the Senate’s health care bill, which Reid is responsible for crafting. Under the procedure, the substance of House Resolution 1586 would be removed and replaced with the entire Senate...

WASHINGTON – The top Senate Democrat says lawmakers of both parties assured President Barack Obama on Tuesday that they will rally behind whatever decision he makes on Afghanistan. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that both Democrats and Republicans told the president, basically, "Whatever decision you make, we'll support it." The comment came after Senate and House leaders of both parties met with Obama at the White House to discuss his war review. Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell put it differently. In his words: "I think Republicans will be able to make the decisions for themselves."

The Nevada Secretary of State was on television all weekend discussing his office's prosecution of ACORN. The Secretary of State, Ross Miller, is himself a Democrat. That's important, obviously, because ACORN's first reaction to most investigations is to say they are political. Given Miller's party affiliation that is harder to do. Much more important that that, Miller's office isn't going after some of the help. Instead, they are going after ACORN itself.

The Republican who ousted the Democratic leader of the Senate in 2004 says Harry Reid finds himself in a similar predicament of representing a conservative-leaning state but leading a liberal party. Sen. John Thune made Senate history when he unseated Sen. Tom Daschle by exploiting the gap between Mr. Daschle’s interests in Washington and those of his home state of South Dakota. That’s exactly where Mr. Reid, the Senate majority leader, is now, he said. “In the case of Senator Daschle, he was leading a left-of-center caucus and representing a right-of-center state - it was very difficult to reconcile those...

The conduct of Democrats in Washington, D.C. has found a way to even impress Al Qaeda. Who would have thought that the terrorist organization could learn a trick or two from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi? Based on a CBS Evening News report it seems that the Democratic leadership in the House, Senate, and even the White House can add Abdullah Asieri to their list of mentees. The article states that Asieri learned a sneaky trick from the narcotics trade, which was to insert into his rectum a pound of high explosives. I beg to differ with this attribution; I...

Harry Reid is the slimiest politician ever to crawl out of Salt Lake. Like most liberal socialist leaders today, he has a serious God complex. He and his fellow libs are going to federalize 1/6th of the US economy, they are going to take over healthcare, and they are going to cram this down our throats whether we want it or not. They are our betters and they will do what they want, regardless of what the people tell them. Damn the doctors. Damn the middle class. Damn the small business person. Damn the people who like their current healthcare....

The Democratic leader of the US Senate has urged President Barack Obama to fulfill his campaign promise to scrap the ban on gays in the military, in a letter released Thursday. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid appeals to Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to come to Congress with recommendations on how to repeal the law that forbids gays from openly serving in the armed services. "As Congress considers future legislative action, we believe it would be helpful to hear your views on the policy," Reid wrote in the September 24 letter released by his office. "Your leadership in this...

Will an Administration which campaigned on the principle of transparency stoop to such a low? You bet they will!"Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency." -- Barack Hussein Obama, January 21, 2009 Readers may also recall this promise which Obama made repeatedly during the campaign: To achieve health care reform, "I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies -- they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will...

When legislation of significant importance is attached to an unrelated bill as an amendment to avoid getting 60 votes, this tactic needs to be immortalized. Let's call it "Reiding the Bill" or "Reiding the legislation". Let's all give Harry Reid his due fame.

After this heathcare is rammed down our throats by the misfit from Nevada I hope the there is a new term used freely in Congress for it. Let's call it Reiding the bill.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of U.S. voters say legislation should be posted online in final form and available for everyone to read before Congress votes on it. The only exception would be for extreme emergencies. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds only six percent (6%) of voters disagree with this approach while 10% are not sure. Of those who favor posting congressional bills in their final form on the Internet, 64% say they should be available to the public two weeks or more before Congress votes and 29% favor posting bills one week before a vote. Just four percent...