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Health-Reform Vote Deserves A Reasonable Process March 16, 2010 WE UNDERSTAND the administration's sense of urgency on health-care reform. But what is intended as a final sprint threatens to turn into something unseemly and, more important, contrary to Democrats' promises of transparency and time for deliberation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday that she is leaning toward a parliamentary maneuver under which the House would vote on a package of changes to the Senate-approved reform bill, and the underlying Senate bill would then be "deemed" to have passed, even though the House had never voted on it. That may...

The final outcome of the health care reform debate is uncertain — who can predict where a writhing eel will land? — but we have learned a few things already. First, we know that President Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership could not persuade a majority of Americans of the wisdom of their plan — and have largely ceased to try. As of this writing, a president who seems willing to interrupt prime-time programming on the slightest pretext has not scheduled a speech from the Oval Office to make his final health reform appeal. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is working...

Road To Serfdom: Liberals' plan to reform the medical system has always seemed more an attempt to radically transform the nation than a good-faith effort to cut costs and expand coverage. Now they've confirmed it. Today's Democrats aren't interested in constitutional or traditional limitations on government. They want to remake American life based on their notions of what's ideal, and they are more than willing to force leftward change on an ostensibly free people. While this has been clear for some time, it still rocks us a bit when they acknowledge such plans out loud. The loudest came Monday when...

There will be no doubt where lawmakers stand after the dust clears on healthcare, said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, who dismissed the controversy over the so-called Slaughter Solution Tuesday. Republicans are crying foul over a proposed rule that would allow for House passage of the Senate healthcare bill without an actual up-or-down vote. Gibbs called the complaints "a legislative process game."

Health Reform: Using a parliamentary trick ironically known as the "self-executing rule," Democrats plan on passing their massive health bill without voting. In November, they'll learn just how "self-executing" it was. Just when you thought Washington couldn't get more corrupt, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this week seems intent on trampling representative government itself. Unable to get the votes to pass their U.S. health care revolution, she and her fellow Democratic leaders have figured out a way to pass it without a vote. The "self-executing rule" has been "used to adopt concurrent resolutions correcting the enrollment of measures or to make...

Washington (CNN) -- Five more House Democrats said Tuesday that they will vote against Senate health care legislation, which puts opponents of reform just 11 votes shy of the 216 needed to prevent President Obama from scoring a major victory on his top domestic priority. An ongoing CNN analysis shows that opposition in the House to the Senate health care plan has reached 205 members. A total of 27 House Democrats, including nine who supported the House plan in November, have indicated that they would join a unified Republican caucus in opposing the Senate plan, which passed in that chamber...

know you're not going to listen to me. I'm going to say it anyway, because as a concerned citizen of The United States of America, I must. You are making a grave, perhaps nation-ending mistake. Attempting to "deem" the Health Care bill passed when it has not actually been voted on is not Constitutional. Article 1, Section 7: There are millions of Americans who are extraordinarily pissed off right now. Some of them, like me, write scathing columns on The Internet or we rant on Talk Radio and Television (such as Judge Napolitano) But some just smolder. Some remember the...

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,...

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...

http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0310/Hoyer_Dems_dont_have_the_votes.html http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/hoyer-defends-controversial-house-procedure/ http://thehill.com/homenews/house/87047-gop-to-try-to-stop-slaughter-solution