[Congressman Billybob]

Written early. Posted early on FreeRepublic because of interest in both subjects, the Medicare bill and bias in the American media.

[Keith in Iowa]

I hope you also faxed this to AP in Washington - just for fun.

[farmfriend]

Great article.

[Peach]

Thanks for writing all this.

Before I left to go up north for a visit, it looked as though this bill would fail and I paid it little attention.

Since returning last week, I can see the handwriting on the wall and have been researching the various aspects of this bill (which I'm not in favor of but that's beside the point).

If ever there was proof of media bias, this is it.

[Peach]

For your media bias ping list.

[Chu Gary]

No doubt these are grandchildren of the "Dewey Wins Presidency" crowd.

[John Lenin]

The liberal media, they don't just report the news, they create it out of thin air.

[Bubba_Leroy]

You cannot necessarily trust what you read in the papers, or see on network TV.

GASP! No, tell me it isn't so!

How about you cannot trust anything you read in the papers or see on network TV.

[jigsaw]

Very interesting. Thanks.

[Cicero]

Nice expose. But you're too kind to them to suggest that they care about getting a story right. As long as it serves their political purpose they could care less about mere facts. It's no skin off the reporters' noses. Their bosses won't discipline them for screwing up the facts, just as long as they continue to screw up--or lie--in ways that favor the Democrats.

[Ann Archy]

I....Skeptic Numero Uno....BELIEVED the lying as* press today!! Thank you Billy Bob for the COMLETE ACCURATE STORY! The sheeple will continue to be lied to by the media.

[Iowa Granny]

Nice work.

freepmail headed your way

[mhking]

In my Sophmore statistics class, I learned that with statistical manipulation, you can make anything say whatever the heck you want it to say.

Just damn.

If you want on the new list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...

[arasina]

EXCELLENT! This deserves a

[sully777]

Bad bill. Will destroy economy and leave nothing but impossible public debt for my children. Does it matter how the votes came about to pass this garbage? Republicans that voted for this act are not conservatives.

[FirstPrinciple]

In another post, I read that Butch Otter of Idaho and Trent Franks of Arizona (both Rs) changed their vote late hours. After they changed their votes, some Democrats also changed their votes to make it a final 220-215. In any case, it is a disgrace that this bill passed.

[BCrago66]

Do you have a link to the breakdown of the final tally?

[Texas_Jarhead]

November 23, 2003


Up until three hours into what should have been a 15-minute vote, we had stopped the Medicare prescription-drug bill in the U.S. House.

Late into the three-hour vote, one member of Congress commented to Congressman Ron Paul that his Liberty Caucus had "saved the Republicans..." and had pulled it off.  Congressman Paul also heard from several other House colleagues that they were getting a lot of E-mails, faxes and phone calls from "Liberty Committee people."

We're extremely pleased that 11 of the 25 "no" votes are members of The Liberty Caucus.  We are, however, especially disappointed with two of our caucus members, Butch Otter (Idaho) and Trent Franks (Arizona).  They were the two members who caved into pressure and changed their vote, thus ushering in what will become the largest federal entitlement program in U.S. history. We are also disappointed in the other caucus members who voted in
favor of this "entitlement" monster.  Details about what happened during the three-hour vote will be given later.

The issue at hand is focusing our efforts in the U.S. Senate. The Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill Monday, November 23. We need to exert the same pressure in the Senate as we did in the House.  Unfortunately, we have no organized caucus in the Senate to help defeat the bill, and that makes your efforts even more critical.

We oppose the Medicare prescription-drug bill as does Senator Ted Kennedy, but for a very different reason.  Kennedy and the Democrats want health care run totally by the federal government and paid for by taxes and borrowing: in short, socialized medicine.  We oppose the bill, but again, for quite a different reason.  Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona (a member of The Liberty Caucus) who voted against the bill in the House said it
best:  "This proposal flies in the face of the principles of limited government and individual responsibility that Republicans are suppose to stand for.  The enormous cost of this proposal will only hasten Medicare’s insolvency, and we’ll have to rely on future Congresses to have the political courage that this Congress lacks.  In the end, I think this looks like nothing more than an extremely expensive way to buy votes."  

Senator John McCain, also of Arizona, has vowed to stop it.  This afternoon, CNN reported the following:  "McCain, appearing with Kennedy on ABC's 'This Week,' said he, too, would join the filibuster, but for different reasons.

'I come from a different exact opposite point from Ted,' McCain said. 'He wants to make it bigger, I want to make it better.' McCain said the new program would fail and 'add another $8 trillion in unfunded mandates that we're laying on our kids.'

With that in mind -- added to the country's overall budget deficit -- the Arizonan questioned 'what's ever happened to my party's fiscal discipline?'

'Somehow we've lost our way,' he said. 'And we are laying a terrible burden on the next generation of Americans.'"

The fight isn't over.  We still have a chance in the Senate. Urge your senators to oppose the Medicare prescription-drug bill, not for the reason of Senator Ted Kennedy, but for the reason of Senator John McCain and Representative Jeff Flake.

Send your senators an E-mail or call them or, better yet, do both. That’s what made such an impression in the House.

Send an E-mail message:
http://capwiz.com/liberty/issues/alert/?alertid=4290501&type=CO

Call your senators:  202-224-3121

Kent Snyder
The Liberty Committee
http://www.thelibertycommittee.org

[Quicksilver]

Thank you for writing this. I went to bed at 4:00 AM not knowing the final outcome, but thinking it had probably failed to pass. I was stunned to read the next morning of the historic roll call (longest ever, true?), and that, apparently, some "arm twisting" had changed some Republican votes. I knew that wasn't true because the totals for the R's had not changed from when I went to bed.

[RippleFire]

bump

[BillF]

How did the Associated Press and various networks, and various "leading" newspapers like the Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post, blow the story so badly?

It's not just a lack of people watching the voting process. The media template says that the House GOP, especially Tom Delay, hammers and coerces its members into voting the party line. Meanwhile, the media says that the Dems "work so hard" to hold the line against the bill.

In the last 40 minutes the CQ Weekly health reporter was on C-SPAN talking about the bill and saying (paraphrase, but quite close):

Nancy Pelosi worked very hard on this and was very, very, very intense in trying to hold her troops together. She got almost all of them united in her struggle against the dominant Republicans.

Something like that. She did say "very, very, very" literally.