Posted on 01/12/2010 9:04:47 PM PST by Hayrider
It’s going to fail.
Here’s why it’s going to fail…
(Excerpt) Read more at thehayride.com ...
The longer it takes, the more the blue dogs will get cold feet.
I think they already understand this and they’re looking for a way out of this deal rather than through it.
When Brown wins in Massachusetts next week, they’ll be more than happy to throw up their hands and blame the whole thing on Republican obstructionism.
Three good points, well argued. But I’m not seeing exactly how this bill will be stopped. We shall see.
I think Arnold’s analogy is off just a bit, thought. Nebraska got the corn and everyone else got the cob. If you don’t know what corn cobs were once used for, then you’re not up on your history BC (Before Charmin).
Unions are not going to bolt the Democrats, anymore than blacks will vote for anyone else than Harry Reid in his state.
I wonder if many of them are hoping Brown wins as a way to sink ObamaCare.
I always thought the moderate Dems in 2008 would vote for Juan McCain, the other Democrat, because Obama was a far left nightmare and would hijack the party. I obviously game the Dems more credit then they deserved.
First, this business with the labor unions taking a powder on the provision taxing high-end health plans in the Senate version of Obamacare is very, very bad for the legislation. The unions have been a colossal player both in creating a Barack Obama presidency and supplying him with a governing Democrat majority, and also in pushing Obamacare last year – unions spent millions and millions and millions of dollars pushing the plan. On Monday, they weighed in with unmistakable language panning the Senate bill and demanding that rather than taxing “Cadillac” health care plans that unions have negotiated with management over the years, that the final bill includes a tax on incomes over $500,000 a year instead (which is what the House bill had).
Obama had an emergency meeting Monday night with the heads of several labor unions, in an effort to paper over the crisis. No agreement was reached, though union leaders like the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka said the legislation is “too important for us to get this close and then say we quit.”
Trumka did say, in typical union-speak, that if he doesn’t get what he wants the Democrats will get crushed in this fall’s elections.
“Politicians who think that working people have it too good—too much health care, too much Social Security and Medicare, too much power on the job—are inviting a repeat of 1994,” Trumka said. “Our country cannot afford such a repeat.”
He’s not alone.
The head of the International Association of Firefighters, Harold A. Schaitberger, made similarly threatening remarks in a statement Monday.
“The president’s support for the excise tax is a huge disappointment and cannot be ignored. If President Obama continues to support it and signs a bill that includes the excise tax on workers, we will hold him accountable,” said Schaitberger, who was not among the attendees at the White House meeting.
It’s a mess for the President and his minions on Capitol Hill. The labor unions are in a position to force either a switch to the millionaire tax in the House bill, which will engender major problems of its own, or to water down the Cadillac bill tax and in so doing blow a hole in the budget which endangers several Democrat votes in both the Senate and the House. It’s an almost intractable problem these guys have gotten themselves into.
Second, the bribes are a major problem. The outrage over Mary Landrieu’s Louisiana Purchase and Ben Nelson’s Cornhusker Kickback has brought opposition to this bill to a new level. And it gets worse; C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb blew open a major hole in the president’s rhetoric when he demanded that the negotiations over the bill be televised. When Lamb’s letter was followed by a video from Andrew Breitbart showing EIGHT separate occasions when Candidate Obama promised to put the healthcare negotiations on C-SPAN, it was a colossal embarrassment to all concerned. Members of Congress and Senators alike are now asking that Nelson’s Medicaid bribe either be wiped off the books or that all concerned get to wet their beaks, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has flip-flopped on healthcare and cut the president deep with a one-liner about Nebraska getting the corn and California the husk and there is even now a controversy about the fact that the Amish are exempt from the plan and there is enough sleaze here to peel off squeamish Democrats on multiple fronts before one even gets into the question of how Harry Reid’s stupid statements on race might affect his ability to generate a deal.
Third, the abortion issue is a nightmare for this bill. Bear in mind that the House version passed with only 220 votes, one of which was from Joseph Cao, the Republican from New Orleans who has said he won’t be a deciding vote in favor of final passage. Cao also is unlikely to vote for anything less than the Stupak Amendment which was watered down in the Senate bill. Strip him out, and the margin for error is almost nonexistent. As partisan Democrat pundit Bob Shrum opines on TheWeek.com:
(Abortion) roiled the debate from the start; but over the Christmas break, Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak, who voted for the House version of reform, issued a threat via the front page of the New York Times to oppose legislation that includes the Senate abortion compromise, which is less draconian than his own amendment. The original House bill passed by only five votes. Stupak claims he has 10 House members prepared to follow his lead and switch if the Senate language isn’t changed. In effect, he’s said he won’t settle for anything less than a system that, in the guise of denying public funding for abortion—something the Senate bill actually does—also prevents Americans from purchasing abortion coverage with their own money.
Stupak noted that his position was a product of his Roman Catholic faith. This is a simple-minded reading of the relationship between religion and the public sphere. As both Ted Kennedy and Mario Cuomo argued a generation ago—Kennedy in the lion’s den of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Baptist University, and Cuomo at the Catholic stronghold of Notre Dame—in a free and pluralistic society, not every command of faith can be written into secular law. Otherwise, for example, the Catholic bishops might be pushing to outlaw divorce—a cause for which they have lobbied in other countries.
Here in America, the bishops have been unable to persuade a majority to ban abortion. It’s not for lack of trying; they’ve become overt political actors—assailing John Kerry in the 2004 campaign and Joe Biden in 2008 because both are Catholics who refuse to subordinate their judgments on public policy to church doctrine.
This is a long way from the commitment John Kennedy, the first Catholic president, offered during his 1960 campaign—to “an America where no public official requests or accepts instructions…from…any…ecclesiastical source, where no religion seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly on the public acts of officials.” Half a century later, the bishops are attempting to achieve by indirection what they cannot achieve outright—a partial ban on a woman’s right to choose. Having abetted thousands of priests in molesting children, they’re now set on abusing health reform.
All this not only transgresses the line drawn by JFK in 1960; it’s also at odds with the social teachings I learned in Catholic school. The bishops would deny health coverage to more than 30 million Americans by blocking a compromise that plainly spends no taxpayer dollars for abortion services. Stupak echoes their hard line. If health reform goes down, he said, “it’s not the end of the world.” (Certainly not of his world; he won’t be giving up his own generous congressional health insurance coverage.)
Take those three fatal wounds waiting to happen, and the chance of actually steering this monstrosity through to final passage in the midst of an American public which hates this legislation like poison drops below levels even the Reids and Pelosis can handle. Politically this thing is a nightmare and November looms as an electoral holocaust for the party.
But it seems there’s an escape hatch up in Massachusetts. And this is how I think things will play out.
EXCERPT
The devil is in the details. Remember there basically are no Republican brains on this gargantuan undertaking, which means that virtually no brains at all are on it. It only dawned on them last week that the Amish could kick this bill’s keister in court, so the Rats are now putting in an exemption for them. Enough “oops, let’s fix it” delays and we have the 2010 elections looming menacingly on many vulnerable seats.
What’s a blue dog?
I think Nebraska got the uranium mine and the rest of the country got the shaft!
A “less liberal” Democrat serving a traditionally conservative constituency, usually in the south. Such a person is particularly vulnerable to losing his or her seat to a Republican.
I wish I could be so optimistic about Brown’s chances. He is up against a revved up fraud machine and would have to win by a very large margin of real cast votes to squeak by in the Counted Votes. And if it is close enough for a recount, well we all know that Democrats win recounts in states with Democrat Secretaries of State.
Always watch what the left hand is doing when the right hand is waving the hankie.
The true motive is to allow the international banking system to consolidate, and to crash the dollar and produce a common currency, IMHO.
Maybe not the bosses, but the rank and file can revolt in a number of ways, especially at the ballot box and the lunch room. Little Tea Parties breaking out all over.
You sure you’re on the right thread?
Yeah, I think your point is a flaw in his argument. Ben Nelson, Lincoln, etal only want to vote for this IF it passes. If it is going to fail, then Ben Nelson and Lincoln at a minimum will vote no. Heck Reid might vote no to try to save his neck, if it is going down.
If this all depends on Brown winning, I’d feel lot better if he wasn’t hovering around 15-20% at Intrade.
I think it will be an amazing vote for both the house and the senate.
In my opinion, there are three possible outcomes. First, everything bogs down just as the article states, to such a degree that no one can agree on what should be in the bill. Cadillac tax or not, abortion or not, etc. until it becomes clear no vote will ever be held. Then congress people can return to their home states and say, we didn’t do this. Of course in blue states this will be held against them.
Second possibility, enough compromises are made so that it passes both houses just barely. For the reasons given in the article, I think this is growing less and less likely.
The third more likely scenario is enough is worked out to get close, but no bill can be cobbled together to get both houses to vote for it to pass. In other words it misses by a few house votes and one or two senate votes, especially if Brown wins in Mass. At that point, everyone wants a revote and many like Nelson, Landrieu, et. al. vote no to have it on their recored that they opposed it. It will be astonishing to see everyone pile on in opposition so they can tell their constituents, I never voted for this!
Yeah, what I said a couple of times is your third point. If this bill is not going to pass, then certain Dims will bail on voting for it. I guess I implied but did not say in my posts that I agree if it does not pass it will likely be for some combination of the three points the author made in his essay.
It’s a myth, like a freakin’ unicorn.
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