Posted on 09/29/2009 8:19:18 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
President Obama and liberals in Congress seem intent on passing comprehensive health care reform, even though polls suggest it is unpopular with the American people. And despite the potential political risks to moderate Democrats, the President and left-wing leadership in Congress are determined to pass the measure using a rare parliamentary procedure.
The Senate plans to attach Obamacare to a House-passed non-healthcare bill. Ironically, nobody knows what that legislation looks like, because it has not yet been written. Yet many members plan to rubber-stamp Obamacare without reading or understanding the bill.
The Senate Finance Committee worked furiously last week to mark up a “conceptual framework” of health care reform. The committee actually rejected an amendment by Sen. Jim Bunning (R.-Ky.) to mandate that the bill text and a final cost analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) be publicly available at least 72 hours before the Finance Committee votes on final passage.
The following four-step scenario describes one way liberals plan to work the rules in their favor to get Obamacare through the Senate:
Step 1: The Senate Finance Committee must first approve the marked-up version of Sen. Max Baucus’ (D.-Mont.) conceptual framework. Then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) can say that two Senate Committees have passed a health care bill, which will allow him to take extraordinary steps to get the bill on the Senate floor.
During the mark-up last week, members had difficulty offering amendments and trying to make constructive changed because they lacked actual legislative text and Baucus made unilateral last minute changes. For example, the AP reported that “under pressure from fellow Democrats, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee decided to commit an additional $50 billion over a decade toward making insurance more affordable for working-class families.”
Step 2: Sen. Reid will take the final product of the Senate Finance Committee and merge it with the product of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, which passed on a party-line vote in July.
Usually, a bill is voted out of committee, and then the Senate takes up the final product of the committee so that all 100 senators can have a hand in the process. With some help from the Obama administration, Reid will decide what aspects of the HELP and Finance Committee bills to keep.
Step 3: Now, Obamacare will be ready to hitch a ride on an unrelated bill from the House. Sen. Reid will move to proceed to H.R. 1586, a bill to impose a tax on bonuses received by certain TARP recipients. This bill was passed by the House in the wake of the AIG bonus controversy and is currently sitting on the Senate Legislative Calendar.
The move to proceed needs 60 votes to start debate. After the motion is approved, Sen. Reid will offer Obamacare as a complete substitute to the unrelated House-passed bill. This means that the entire healthcare reform effort will be included as an amendment to a TARP bill that has been collecting dust in the Senate for months.
Step 4: For this strategy to work, the proponents would need to hold together the liberal caucus of 58 Democrats (including Paul Kirk who was named last Thursday to replace Sen. Kennedy), and the two Independent senators (Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont). These members will have to all hold hands and vote against any filibuster. Once the Senate takes up the bill, only a simple majority of members will be needed for passage. It’s possible one of the endangered moderate Democrats, such as Sen. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), could vote to stop a filibuster then vote against Obamacare so as not to offend angry constituents.
Once the Senate passes a bill and sends it to the House, all the House would have to do is pass the bill without changes and President Obama will be presented with his health care reform measure. If this plan does not work, the Senate and House leadership may go back to considering using reconciliation to pass the legislation.
Adopting this secret plan will not strike most Americans as a transparent, bipartisan, effective way to change how millions of Americans get their health care.
******
Brian Darling is director of U.S. Senate Relations at The Heritage Foundation.
I understand what you're saying, but it's incorrect in my opinion. Here's why:
Money is the same as debt. It's just a representation of debt. And debt is just a claim on future labor.
Let me put it another way:
When you get a paycheck, your employer is simply transferring a certain amount of claims on future labor (money) that it owns to you - so now you are the "master" over those claims on future labor.
Debt is also claims on future labor. Money is just what we use to trade those claims around with, because it is convenient.
In other words, debt = money and money = debt.
We've heard about the huge contraction in debt that our economy is experiencing from enormous numbers of loans going into default.
Every dollar of debt that defaults and disappears also means that a dollar of "money" has disappeared - because money = debt.
What happens when you have a big decrease of money for approximately the same amount of goods/services? You get deflation. The money becomes harder to get, but it buys more. Deflation also makes existing debt more difficult to pay off, since it takes more labor to earn a dollar - even though a dollar will buy more.
The Federal government is issuing debt as fast as it can to try and balance out the avalanche occurring on the other side of our nation's balance sheet. The government is the only entity that can create new "base debt" into the system. After it gets introduced then banks can create more debt (money) by making loans. But those new loans cannot be made without the Federal government issuing the new debt first.
Inflation can only happen if the Federal government issues more debt (and the banks make tons of loans off of that new debt) in order to overcome the debt destruction that is occurring.
It's not going to happen. We are in a deflationary spiral for the next 8 to 10 years.
Cash is king. Gold and silver are good hedges, but I firmly believe they will be dropping significantly in value (along with all other commodities). Expect gold to drop below $800/oz and silver to go below $10/oz
See post #41...
Perhaps you overlook the problems incurred by the implementation of the act itself. It's guaranteed to be chaos ... then what?
“Cash is king. Gold and silver are good hedges, but I firmly believe they will be dropping significantly in value (along with all other commodities). Expect gold to drop below $800/oz and silver to go below $10/oz”
But where to keep it? In the freezer, lol? Also, what currency?
tep 1: The Senate Finance Committee must first approve the marked-up version of Sen. Max Baucus’ (D.-Mont.) conceptual framework.
Rule 4 of the Rules of Procedure for the Senate Finance Committee reads: “Rule 4. Quorums. - (a) Except as provided in subsection (b) one-third of the membership of the committee, including not less than one member of the majority party and one member of the minority party, shall constitute a quorum for the conduct of business.” That means, at least one Republican Senator on the Finance Committee needs to be in attendance in order to pass any legislation out of committee.
In other words, 10 Republican Senators (Charles Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Olympia Snowe, Jon Kyl, Jim Bunning, Mike Crapo, Pat Roberts, John Ensign, Mike Enzi and John Cornyn) could stop ObamaCare cold right now by simply saying they will not support it under any circumstances. If those 10 Senators would simply say “no,” and deny Democrats on the Finance Committee a quorum; ObamaCare would be done... finished... it would die in committee...
Contact those 10 Republicans to demand they not particpate in a quorum to vote any health care mark up out of committee. Toll free numbers to the Capital switchboard are below.
800-833-6354
866-340-9281
877-762-8762
866-808-0065
888-355-3588
866-220-0044
800-862-5530
877-851-6437
800-417-7666
It would be really nice if there was a "bank" that could keep cash safe, and charge a fee for the service.
This bank would not be able to lend the money out, it would just be safe in their vault.
The owner of the money could then decide what investment strategies they wanted to do with their capital, and banks wouldn't be able to use that money as part of their fractional reserve to enslave others to debt.
It would be the same concept as a storage facility for your household goods - except it would be to store your money.
I'm not sure what you mean by "what currency". If you mean whether to hold U.S. dollars versus another currency then I would tend to hold the dollars.
I like your banking idea, although I don’t mind fractional reserve banking [but not as highly leveraged as most have done], it would be best if saving and lending was done on a very local level. Just like credit unions were supposed to work.
Interestingly, a small bank in CT or RI hadn’t had any defaults as of a couple months ago. Why? They didn’t lend to deadbeats and/or those with insufficient down payment. The bank Presidents reward? He was chastised by Fed authorities for not lending enough. Unbelievable.
I was asking about USD vs. Aussie dollar for example [shoulda bought at .64] So I take it you think the dollar will strengthen?
Cheers!
“...a conceptual framework of healthcare reform...”
That’s brilliant liberal-speak for passing it without writing it and writing it after it’s passed, in secret, to avoid the criticism and backlash of the peasants.
IMHO
“FRIGGIN NO GOOD TRAITORS”
Nah. Make that “FRIGGING NO GOOD TRAITOROUS SCU#BAGS”
IMHO
This is what we get for voting that ZEBRA bastard into office. Impeach it now.
People don't understand that this has absolutely nothing to do with healthcare, per se. The Federal government used to steal money out of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, but those wells are running dry - especially with recent unemployment figures.
What does this mean? It means that the government needs to create a new GIGANTIC trust fund that they can steal your health care payments from. Please realize, we're talking around 18% of our entire economy.
It the Federal government fails to create this, then they will be in imminent danger of financial collapse. They will need to cut expenses like nobody's business.
Will the government cut expenses? Probably not. If the health care trust fund fails then they will have little choice but to go after our 401K retirement funds - moving them into a Federal government controlled entity for "our protection".
Prepare folks...it's going to happen.
“People don’t understand that this has absolutely nothing to do with healthcare, per se....”
BINGO!!!BINGO!!BINGO!!!
the Feds NEED cash to play with. IMHO...before all this is said and done...most of us will be writing our mortgage checks directly to the FEDS each month...THATS whats up with the banking sector...
Does sound that way, doesn't it? I sure hope it's just my pessimism and I am wrong. Maybe there are finally enough of us that understand the tipping point has been reached.
It is either/or now if they pass this unconstitutional legislation. Either we refuse to accept it and fight back, or we submit and become serfs forever.
Thanks for that.
But I'm still not seeing it:
When you get a paycheck, your employer is simply transferring a certain amount of claims on future labor (money) that it owes you - ...claims on future labor. This is vaguely Marxian (or Ricardian?): equation of money to labor. But what about "use value?" A guy can labor for years and receive nothing unless society deems the result valuable. (As an artist I know about this.)
Debt is also claims on future labor. Money is just what we use to trade those claims around with, because it is convenient.
Debt is a claim on the borrower's future labor, or on the lenders?: I guy gets a loan to buy a house, now he has a claim on the carpenter's labor. But the bank has an IOU, a claim on the borrower's future labor. But the only thing gained is the interest paid for the temporary assignment of this claim to borrower.
In other words, debt = money and money = debt.
This seems too abstract to me. I think of one as the opposite of the other
We've heard about the huge contraction in debt that our economy is experiencing from enormous numbers of loans going into default.
But wouldn't that mean there are more claims on future labor than there is labor? In other words, that now a unit of actual labor > a unit of claim on labor (money)? It now takes more of these claim tickets to purchase labor? Isn't this the very definition of inflation?
This squares better with the idea that inflation redistributes money (capital, wealth) from the owner of those credits to the debtor.
And therein lies the hubris, what has Pelosi thinking she will garner the 218 necessary to pass it? Have the Blue Dogs gotten over her use of them, reneging on the deal she made prior to the August recess in order to get their votes then?? Has the Hyde language been added (or will it be added) to the Senate bill to keep Bart Stupak (D-MI) and his pro-life contingency from defeating a health care bill as promised?? I am still dubious at this point.
They do, and this will, by virtue of procedure, from the article:
The Senate plans to attach Obamacare to a House-passed non-healthcare bill.
This has been done any number of times over the course of our history, the Senate strikes the language of a House bill and inserts its own text, it requires the bill going back to the House to get the 218 for passage. But as I just wrote, this is not a guarantee, especially if the Senate does not include the Hyde language re: no federal funding for abortion but the exceptions, if this is not in the Senate bill, Stupak has promised Pelosi that he does have the votes and will kill the bill. I do not know at this point if any member of the Senate offered the amendment, as the language was not included in the Baucus deal presented.
Not right away, but yes. Look what happened to the dollar index in September, 2008. That's nothing compared to what's coming.
Close, but no.
The Federal government needs cash to play with. The Fed is a completely separate institution that controls and implements ALL of our country's economic policies.
I doubt very much that this silly trickery is going to pass.
Since this plan is revealed in public then it is not a secret anymore and have not been a secret at all if the plan has ever existed to begine with. It is impossible to keep a secret when dealing with Congress and hundreds of people involved. I doubt very much that this will pass and I doubt very much that they are going to do as the author is saying. This plan is utterly stupid. In fact I doubt very much that this plan even exists.
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