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Posts Tagged ‘Democratic Senators’

Obama Sells US Judge Nomination For Health Care Vote; Gibbs: “Whatever it takes to get health care done”

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

President Barack Obama Nominated tbe Brother of "Undecided" House Democrat Jim Mathesan to Apparently Purchase Matheson's health care vote

In a deal reminiscent of the shady deals Obama cut with Democratic Senators from Louisiana (“Louisiana Purchase”) and Nebraska (“Cornhusker Kickback”) to get Senate health care votes, Obama nominated the brother (Scott M. Matheson, Jr.) of “undecided” House Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Ut.) on Wednesday in an apparent sale of Rep. Matheson’s vote for the price of his brother’s nomination.

Candidate Barack Obama in 2008 surely would have opposed such a blatant backroom deal by the President to purchase a health care vote from a wavering Congressperson, as Candidate Obama pledged in 2008 that all negotiations amongst politicians would be “televised on C-SPAN” to avoid the creation of backroom deals by politicians amongst themselves and/or with special interest groups.   Public disclosure of the appointment of Rep. Matheson’s brother to the US Attorney position comes in the midst of Obama’s call today for the Democratic leadership of Congress to use reconciliation to avoid the GOP filibuster and pass health care.

Commenting today regarding Obama’s hectic efforts to obtain passage of the massive, signature initiative of his Presidency, top White House spokesman Robert Gibbs stated the White House is doing “”whatever it takes to get health care done.” Today’s disclosure of the apparent use of a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals federal judicial nomination as a bargaining chip to obtain House health care votes could result in increased opposition amongst many Americans to the passage of Obamacare.

UPDATE: Hotair points out an interesting quote from Obama today in light of the news of the Obama’s appointment of the brother of “undecided” House Dem Jim Matheson (D-UT) to an appellate seat: “I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform.” Apparently Obama may be including the sale of federal appellate seats as part of doing “everything” in his “power to make the case for reform.”

UPDATE #2: Ed at Hotair points out that during the health care summit, Obama used more time than anyone else and ran over hsi claimed amount every time he spoke yet continuously scolded the GOP to be “brief”. Yet another example of Obama’s “do as I say and not as I do” mindset, similar to the CSPAN transparency claim outlined above.

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Halftime at Health Summit as Obama Declares “Legitimate Philosophical Disagreement” Exists

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

President Obama Giving Opening Remarks at Today's Health Care Summit

Halftime (three hours in) has been reached at the much-hyped health care summit, and the first half mainly focused on the GOP and Obama going back and forth, mainly talking past each other than to each other as both sides recited their prepared scripts and talking points, with GOP Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tn.) declaring that “We believe we have a better idea” on health care reform. At this point, neither side appears to have gained an upper hand from the proceedings, although the issue of comprehensive health reform (Democrats) versus incremental health reform (Republicans) has been made explicitly clear. Obama summed up the proceedings to the press on the way to lunch by stating that “legitimate philosophical differences” were exposed in the first half of the summit as reported by ABC’s Jake Tapper:

The president said that he believes there are areas where they are finding agreement, but did not out right answer a reporter’s question if he believes the first half of the summit had made progress yet.

“”I think we’re establishing that there are actually some areas of real agreement. And we’re starting to focus on what the real disagreements are,” Obama said, “ If you look at you know the issue of how much government should be involved, you know the argument that republicans are making really isn’t that this is a government takeover of health care but rather than, we’re insuring or we’re regulating the insurance market too much.”

The president called this a “legitimate philosophical disagreement” that he hopes to explore more in the afternoon sessions.

As noted earlier, a minor dust up over equal time between Senate Minority Leader McConnell (R-Ky) and President Obama culminated in an Obama quip that his time doesn’t count towards the equal division between the parties “because I’m the President.” Vice President Joe Biden interrupted Obama mid-sentence at one point to contradict the President and House Member Eric Cantor (R-Va) and argued that no serious philosophical difference existed between the parties over federal insurance regulation. GOP Senator John McCain (R-Az) got in a few rhetorical shots at the odious process around Obamacare to date, pointing out a few of the backroom deals between special interest groups and the President as well as deals with individual Democratic Senators. Obama reacted testily and scolded McCain, at one point advising the Senator that “the campaign is over” in reference to Obama’s victory over 2008 GOP Presidential nominee. An early dispute between Obama and Alexander over whether Obamacare would cause premiums to rise appeared to be a draw, with both sides making arguably accurate arguments based on the same data.

Obama also introduced two new talking points during the first half: analogies of health insurance to car insurance and health insurance regulation to the government’s regulation of food safety.

Finally, before the meeting began, Obama gave a cryptic response to a reporter’s shouted question, do you have a “Plan B”, which may have been in reference to the WSJ story last night which claimed the White House is preparing a scaled down, approximately 250 Billion Dollar plan (as opposed to the 950 Billion of the present Obama Health Plan). The AP reports the exchange:

A month after the Massachusetts election that cost Democrats their Senate supermajority and threw the health legislation in doubt, the White House has developed its own slimmed-down health care proposal so the president will know what the impact would be if he chooses that route, according to a Democratic official familiar with the discussions. That official could not provide details, but Democrats have looked at approaches including expanding Medicaid and allowing children to stay on their parents’ health plans until around age 26.

The slimmer backup plan was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Obama himself hinted at a Democrats-only strategy. When asked by reporters as he walked to Blair House if he had a Plan B, he responded: “I’ve always got plans.”

The Politico is also reporting that Obama intends to abandon all bipartisan negotiations on Monday of next week, so it may be that the WSJ was false and Obama intends to attempt to push his comprehensive plan through the Senate via reconciliation after the summit.

UPDATE: Ed at Hotair finds an interesting tidbit from Harry Reid this morning, saying on camera in his initial speech that “no one has talked about reconciliation.” Even the left wing new media site TPM called Reid’s statement “obviously not true.”

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Obama Reconciliation Strategy Rallies Moderate Democrats

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Democratic Senators are Rallying Around Obama's Health Plan and the Use of the Reconciliation Process

In the wake of the release of the 11 page Obama Health Plan, which clearly envisions the use of the parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation, moderate Democratic Senators who are on record opposing the use of reconciliation for Obamacare are now reversing themselves. Senators Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Ben Nelson (D-Ne.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who all previously stated their opposition to the reconciliation procedure, are signaling that their opposition to reconciliation is now waning. Additionally, some House Democrats who previously opposed the Senate bill are also softening their opposition. Both House and Senate Democrats appear both impressed by Obama’s release of his own plan as well as accepting the Obama Administration’s argument that a bad bill is better than no bill for Democratic electoral prospects in November 2010. Obama’s strategy to paint the GOP as obstructionists is also helping garner Democratic support for the use of reconciliation. Indeed, as Thursday’s health care summit approaches, the continual White House assertions of GOP intransigence on health care appear to be paying off by providing moderate Democrats political cover to abandon their prior anti-reconciliation stances.

Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown reports:

An idea that seemed toxic only weeks ago — using a parliamentary tactic to ram health reform through the Senate — is gaining acceptance among moderate Democrats who have resisted the strategy but now say GOP opposition may force their hands.

The implications of the subtle shift among this small group of centrist senators could mean the difference between success and failure for health care reform — giving Democrats a potential road map for passing a bill that had been left for dead after the Massachusetts Senate defeat.

That mood in the Senate was matched Tuesday by a growing momentum for President Barack Obama’s health care proposal in the House, where Democrats were beginning to coalesce around the view that passing a flawed bill is better than passing none at all.

These shifts couldn’t come at a better time for Obama ahead of Thursday’s health care summit. The White House has signaled he’s prepared to use reconciliation, which would require just 51 votes to pass health reform.

The comments also seemed to reflect the early soundings of a Democratic strategy for selling the public on the tactic, especially if no Republicans sign on to Obama’s plan after the summit: The GOP made us do it.

“Obviously, if the minority is just frustrating the process, that argues for taking steps to get the public’s business done,” said Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who was one of the leading voices against the procedure after the Massachusetts election, calling it “very ill-advised.”

“At the same time … Republicans would probably shut the place down, but you could argue they are doing that anyway,” Bayh said.

Bayh’s remarks Tuesday came a day after Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) cited Republican obstructionism as a reason why she could embrace the parliamentary maneuver to pass health care reform. Last month, she said she was leaning against reconciliation.

“I’m staying open to see how these negotiations go forward,” Landrieu said. “I’ve not generally been a big supporter, but the Republican Party, the leadership, has really been very, very, very disingenuous in this process.”

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said he doesn’t prefer reconciliation, but it may be the only way.

“I’d like to see as many votes as possible,” he said. “But at the end of the day, with the obstructionism going on at the level that it is, I’m more interested in what’s in the package than I am in the process of how many votes it takes to get it through.”

To be sure, the hints on reconciliation do not signal any kind of ironclad commitment. Democrats remain hesitant about using the procedure, fearful that Republicans will be successful in convincing voters that it is an end-run around the normal legislative process.

However, it is a mixed bag for Democrats in the past few days, as shown by Steny Hoyer’s comments earlier today that “[w]e may not be able to do” a comprehensive health care reform bill. Some moderate House Democrats also voiced disapproval with Obama’s new strategy, including Blue Dog leader Heath Shuler (D-Pa.) and Jason Altmire (D-Pa.). Considering today’s shift of moderate Democratic Senators towards supporting Obama’s plan to use reconciliation, the tougher battle for Obama may now lie with finding 218 votes from the House of Representatives, especially as perhaps as many as 60 Democratic House members are facing defeat in November 2010. The Associated Press outlines the importance of Thursday’s summit and the uncertainty of House passage:

If Obama fails on a comprehensive health care overhaul where Bill Clinton and other presidents failed before him, the chance won’t come around again anytime soon.

The whole endeavor will now rise or fall on Obama’s ability to sell his plan at the summit Thursday, and the reaction from lawmakers and the public in the days ahead.

Some rank-and-file Democrats were openly skeptical that the White House and congressional leaders could pull it off. Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., a moderate who opposed the health legislation when it passed the House, questioned whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi could hang on to the votes that allowed her to get the bill through 220-215 in November. Since then a couple of Democrats have left the House, and Pelosi may also lose votes from anti-abortion Democrats who oppose the less restrictive abortion language in the Senate bill, which Obama kept in his plan.

“Is she going to be able to hold everybody that was for it before?” Altmire asked. “What about the marginal members in the middle who got hammered over this vote and would love a second chance to perhaps go against it?”

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Key Democratic House Member Stupak on Obama’s Health Plan: “Unacceptable” – UPDATED 2X

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak today rejects the Obama Plan, calling it "unacceptable"

In a dramatic statement this morning reported exclusively by Ben Smith at Politico, Democratic House Rep. Bart Stupak rejected yesterday’s 11 page Obama Plan as “unacceptable”:

I was pleased to see that President Obama’s health care proposal did not include several of the sweetheart deals provided to select states in the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the President’s proposal encompasses the Senate language allowing public funding of abortion. The Senate language is a significant departure from current law and is unacceptable. While the President has laid out a health care proposal that brings us closer to resolving our differences, there is still work to be done before Congress can pass comprehensive health care reform.

While most of the media’s focus in the past few days has been on whether Obama and Harry Reid can find 50 Democratic Senators (with VP Biden as tiebreaking vote) to push Obamacare through the Senate using reconciliation, little ink has been spilled regarding whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi can again find 218 Democratic votes for Obamacare. It may be that the more difficult task will be finding the 218 House votes, and Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak’s “unacceptable” comment this morning brings that difficulty into focus. Dick Morris recently wrote about the coming battle to find 218 votes in the House:

We don’t believe that there is any chance of stopping Obama’s renewed push for his horrible health care changes in the Senate. Harry Reid is going to use the reconciliation procedure to jam it through with 51 votes — and he will get them. All the hype about how difficult it will be is to distract us from the real battle which will come in the House.

There, where every member faces re-election, it will be a lot harder for Pelosi to round up the vote she needs. Last time she passed health care by 220-215. This time, a lot of the Democrats who voted for health care are going to be so worried about re-election that they might be induced to jump ship.

Stupak previously led the fight to conform the prior House version of Obamacare to existing law regarding federal funding of abortion and succeeded in forcing through an amendment in the House with tough language disallowing any federal funding of abortion through Obamacare. The Senate bill has much more permissive language regarding such federal abortion funding, and Stupak’s “unacceptable” statement this morning highlights the importance of the abortion policy in Obamacare and could be a sign that the House of Representatives will not pass the Obama Plan without the insertion of Stupak’s prior restrictive language.  The key question in days and weeks to come is whether liberal Democratic House members will buckle under and support the restrictive abortion language Stupak is advocating or risk the defeat of Obamacare in the House of Representatives.

UPDATE: Hotair links to an interesting analysis by Philip Klein on the issue of House passage of Obama’s Health Plan:

Of the 39 Democrats who voted against the House health care bill [in November], 31 of them were elected in districts that went for John McCain in 2008, according to a TAS analysis. One of the Democratic “no” votes, Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama, has subsequently switched parties. Given that a Republican who campaigned on being a vote against the health care bill was just elected to fill the Senate seat once held by Ted Kennedy in a state that went for Obama by 26 points, it’s hard to see why anybody in a McCain district who already voted “no” would decide switch their vote to “yes.”

While Obama won the districts of the remaining eight “no” votes, in six cases, he won by only single digits, making them potentially competitive races this time around. And a closer look at several members who represent these areas are not very encouraging to proponents of Obamacare…

The biggest problem she faces is that President Obama’s proposal maintains the abortion provision in the Senate bill, rejecting Rep. Bart Stupak’s more restrictive language. When the bill passed the House the first time around, 41 Democrats voted for the health care bill only after voting for the Stupak amendment. Any of them could explain switching to a “no” vote on a final bill by citing abortion funding. Stupak himself has said there are at least 10 to 12 Democrats who voted for the bill the first time who would vote against it if it didn’t include his amendment (he reiterated Tuesday morning that the Senate abortion language adopted by Obama was still “unacceptable”). One of his co-sponsors, Rep. Brad Ellsworth, said at the time that he was only able to vote for the bill after the Stupak language was adopted, and he’s now running for Senate in Indiana, where a Rasmussen poll taken last month shows voters oppose the health care legislation by a 23-point margin.

UPDATE #2: CBS News reports on Stupak’s statement calling the Obama Health Plan “unacceptable” and notes Politico’s reporting that Obama and the Democrats do not have the votes to pass Obamacare now.

Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak, who opposes abortion rights, has released a statement saying the White House health care reform plan is “unacceptable” because it “encompasses the Senate language allowing public funding of abortion.”….

The House health care bill would likely not have passed without the Stupak amendment, which attracted the support of 64 Democrats when it came up for vote.

While the Senate and White House plan bans direct funding of abortions, it allows subsidized individuals to pay for covered abortion services with personal funds.

Meanwhile, according to Politico’s Mike Allen, there are currently not enough votes in the House or Senate to pass a health care reform bill.

“Moderate and endangered lawmakers want the spotlight off comprehensive health reform,” he writes. “Instead, it’s about to take center stage.”

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Obama Proposes Passing Partisan Health Care Plan Via Reconciliation Despite Bipartisan Opposition

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Democratic President Barack Obama, and Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid, signaled this morning the pathway for the final Democratic push for the passage of Obamacare: the reconciliation process

Three days before the highly publicized health care summit, billed by President Obama and Democrats as an opportunity for bipartisan negotiations regarding the provisions of a potential health care overhaul, the White House signaled its intent to move forward with a $950 billion dollar Democrats-only bill that can garner, at most, a bare 51 vote majority in the United States Senate. Indeed, eight Democratic Senators (including Lieberman) have already gone on record opposing the use of reconciliation to ram through the Obamacare package.   Despite Obama’s prior pledges of bipartisan negotiations with the GOP and this morning’s bipartisan rhetoric from the White House, the fact is that the only bipartisanship associated with health care reform is the bipartisan opposition in the House to Obamacare (39 Democratic “no” votes) and the bipartisan opposition to the use of reconciliation to pass Obamacare through the Senate.

The substantive content of this morning’s latest White House version of Obamacare is essentially the same plan negotiated between the President, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the days leading up to Republican Scott Brown’s January 2010 election to the Senate from liberal Massachusetts and the White House roadmap contemplates the use of the reconciliation process in the Senate so as to avoid the need for a 60 vote majority:

“This is our take on the best way to merge the House and Senate bills,” a senior White House official told ABC News. The official said the proposal was “informed by our conversations from negotiations” before Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was elected, thus depriving Democrats of their 60-vote supermajority, as well as from subsequent discussions.

“We thought it would be a more productive meeting if we brought one consolidated plan to use as jumping-off point,” the official said. “We hope the Republicans do the same.”

By posting their proposals in such a form, White House officials are providing a roadmap for how they think they can best pass health care reform in the new post-Massachusetts Senate race reality: have the House pass the Senate bill, then use reconciliation rules requiring only a majority Senate vote to pass the “fix” to make the bill more palatable.

In the conference call with reporters this morning accompanying the disclosure of the latest iteration of Obamacare, White House officials explicitly stated they intend to use reconciliation to pass Obamacare without any GOP Senate votes:

In the course of unveiling Obama’s new health reform proposal on a conference call with reporters this morning, White House advisers made it clearer than ever before: If the GOP filibusters health reform, Dems will move forward on their own and pass it via reconciliation.

The assertion, which is likely to spark an angry response from GOP leaders, ups the stakes in advance of the summit by essentially daring Republicans to try to block reform.

“The President expects and believes the American people deserve an up or down vote on health reform,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said on the call.

Accordingly, it appears that the Obama Administration has settled on pursing the use of the Senate reconciliation process, instead of normal order which would require a 60 vote majority, to pass the most far-reaching reform of the health care system in our nation’s history. Indeed, the “package is designed to help us [use reconciliation] if the Republican party decides to filibuster health care reform,” stated White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer.

The new Obamacare policy summary
and the conference call with reporters strongly indicate that little, if any, substantive discussions will occur at Thursday’s health care summit as the Democrats have now settled on the use of reconciliation as the pathway to final passage of Obamacare. The GOP’s incremental ideas such as allowing the purchase of insurance across state lines, significant tort reform and the use of risk pools for uninsurable Americans with preexisting conditions are nowhere to be found in this morning’s announcement nor in the present Democratic bills in the Senate and House and are essentially inconsistent with the comprehensive, government-centered, Democratic health care reform plans. Furthermore, in a move apparently designed to paint the GOP as pro-insurance, Obama also proposed substantial new federal price controls over the cost of health insurance as part of this morning’s summary.

The above-described White House posture this morning stands in stark contrast to their posture just two weeks ago when the idea of a health care summit was first pitched by President Obama. At that time, Obama promised to engage in substantive negotiations with the GOP on all parts of health care reform plan during the summit:

“I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward” Mr. Obama said in the interview from the White House Library.

The 2/8/2010 NYT piece quoted above notes that it “remained an open question whether the meeting could lead to real consensus on health care, or whether it would serve only to allow Democrats to frame a political argument against the Republicans going into the midterm campaign.” Considering this morning’s developments, and the clearly stated intent to move forward with reconciliation passage of the intra-Democrat negotiated Obamacare, there no longer remains a “open question” and instead Obama intends the coming summit to “serve only to allow Democrats to frame a political argument against the Republicans going into the midterm campaign.”

For the ideological left, this morning’s White House summary and the coming health care summit represent “the last, best shot” to pass a comprehensive, government-centered health care reform plan. To a majority of Americans, including almost all conservatives, a strong majority of independents and even some liberals, the Obama Administration’s continued relentless focus on forcing a strongly partisan Obamacare package through Congress is an unfavorable development, as shown by public polling of Obama’s job approval and the approval of the Democratic health care reform packages in Congress.

At least eight Democratic Senators have already announced their opposition to the use of reconciliation to pass Obamacare, and those Democratic Senators will almost certainly be joined by the 41 GOP Senators in opposition to the President’s reconciliation plan as announced this morning. It appears from early GOP responses that the GOP intends to attempt to garner 10 Democratic Senator votes to block the use of reconciliation (with 10 Democratic votes, the GOP would have the 51 votes needed to block reconciliation).

Indeed, the irony of the health care reform debate and Obama’s continuous public pledges to engage in bipartisan negotiations with the GOP is the fact that the only bipartisanship associated with health care reform is the bipartisan opposition in the House and Senate to Obamacare, and the next few weeks will probably determine if the GOP is able to garner enough bipartisan support to block the passage of Obamacare through the 51-vote (50 votes plus VP Biden tiebreaker) reconciliation process.  Finally, should Obama succeed in finding 217 House votes and 50 Senate votes for Obamacare, the response of the electorate towards those Democrats in November 2010 may be an historic wave of GOP victories rivaling or even surpassing the 1994 GOP wave.

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