Friday, March 19, 2010

The Post Lets Itself Get Spun   [Ramesh Ponnuru]

The lead story in the Washington Post today is: "House unveils $940 billion health accord." (On the web it's even worse: "House leaders announce $940 billion health-care compromise bill.") Republicans, of course, have disputed the $940 billion figure. One of their chief points is that it purports to convey how much the program will cost over ten years, but does not actually cover ten years of its full operation. Counting those years (2014-2023) takes the total federal spending to $2.5 trillion. The $940 billion estimate doesn't even start in 2011, but rather starts from three months ago. (It also doesn't count all the spending in the bill.) Does the story provide any of this context? Does the companion story about the uncertainty of CBO estimates do so? No and no.

This lead story also credits the Democratic claim that Obamacare will reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion in its second decade; it attributes the claim to the CBO. The CBO never made that claim.

03/19 10:09 AM Share

Fake Entitlement Reform   [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Below, Dan quotes Ezra Klein, who argues, among other things, that moderate Democrats should support the Senate health bill in part because its "Medicare Commission. . . makes entitlement reform much more possible." The Washington Post's endorsement of the bill also prominently features the commission, but includes a few caveats: "[T]he commission's scope is not as broad as we would like at the outset, but it is a potentially powerful tool." (The editorial endorsement of the bill is, in general, less full-throated than the endorsement of the paper's news pages.)

The commission is not supposed to recommend, and thus set in motion, changes to eligibility, benefit levels, or cost sharing. In other words, what it's going to do "at the outset" is try to hold down reimbursement rates. That's not "reform." That's the same failed, indeed counterproductive, strategy that Medicare has followed for decades. The Post offers no reason for thinking that a few more years of trying it will make Congress more willing to contemplate real reform. The commission doesn't make reform more likely; it makes it less so.

03/19 09:56 AM Share

NRO Web Briefing New on NRO Most-Read Content @politicojosh: Betsy Markey to change vote from 'no' to 'yes' on health-care. Tweet Sens. Schumer and Graham: Immigration reform, now. Washington Post Peggy Noonan: Now for the Slaughter. Wall Street Journal Michael Gerson: The inept Mr. Holder. Washington Post Editors: Scenes from a devolution as Democrats writhe toward 216 votes. Wall Street Journal John Fund: Don't ask, don't tell, don't vote, don't debate. Wall Street Journal Peter Roff: Democrats: Don't ask, don't tell on HCR. US News & World Report Byron York: As Dems struggle, GOP candidates line up to run Washington Examiner Susan Ferrechio: Dems get tough on holdouts. Washington Examiner Julie Mason: White House tries to manufacture momentum for Obamacare. Washington Examiner David Brooks: The U.S. is becoming a broken society. New York Times Paul Krugman: Why we reform. New York Times Neil Irwin: The CBO's sunny forecast carries big uncertainties. Washington Post Editors: Health reform is a risk worth taking. Washington Post Mark Krikorian: Census has no business asking about race. Answer 'American.' USA Today Editors: The most racist generation. Washington Times Susan Jacoby: To solve the education crisis, end local control of schools. New York Times Rob Long: About those 'naked man' statues all over New York City. Wall Street Journal Jonah Goldberg: An American Divide Rich Lowry: Obama, the Immoderate David Malpass: Chris Dodd’s Big, Misguided Bill Mona Charen: This Is a Non-Arrogant Foreign Policy? Deroy Murdock: Reconciliation Could Blow Up in Dems’ Faces Michelle Malkin: The Deem-o-crats’ Towering Deception Charles Krauthammer: The Biden Incident Kathryn Jean Lopez: Nun Too Supportive Conrad Black: Don’t Give Up on Europe Stephen Spruiell: The Perseverance of Pelosi Andrew C. McCarthy: This Corpse Has the Right to Remain Silent David G. Tuerck & Grover Norquist: Not a Jobs Bill Duncan Currie: Real Medicaid Reform Clifford D. May: Peace Later Michael Barone: Misaligned Incentives Jay Nordlinger: ‘They don’t embarrass easy,’ &c. Victor Davis Hanson: Another Partisan Push for Another ‘Comprehensive Reform’? Daniel Ikenson: China and Currency Valuation The Editors: Political Poison NRO Symposium: The Worst Crisis in 35 Years? KRAUTHAMMER: The Biden Incident LOPEZ: The CBO Score, As Reported by Steny Hoyer BARONE: Misaligned Incentives NORDLINGER: ‘They don’t embarrass easy,’ &c. GOLDBERG: Reading the Tea Party Leaves STEYN: Critical Mass EDITORS: Political Poison HANSON: Sun and Socialism SYMPOSIUM: The Worst Crisis in 35 Years? LEO: Code Words

No Lack of Plaintiffs for the Lawsuit   [John Hood]

Some 4,300 folks have joined up on Facebook so far to send a clear message that they will not simply knuckle under if the House of Representatives pretends to pass Obamacare with the unconstitutional Slaughter Rule. As for me, after careful consideration, I’ve decided that I will not comply, either.

Thanks to the Corner readers who thought up this idea, by the way.

03/19 09:55 AM Share

Tocqueville on the CBO Estimate   [John Pitney]

“When statistics are not based on strictly accurate calculations, they mislead instead of guide. The mind easily lets itself be taken in by the false appearance of exactitude which statistics retain even in their mistakes, and confidently adopts errors clothed in the forms of mathematical truth.” — Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, volume 1, part 2.

03/19 09:53 AM Share

Brutal   [Jonah Goldberg]

CNN and MSNBC are just getting shellacked (via Drudge).

03/19 09:43 AM Share

No Drama Obama   [Jonah Goldberg]

Rich touches on something in his column,  Obama The Immoderate,  that has been at the center of my own personal explanation of both Bush and Obama. Rich writes:

One of Pres. Barack Obama’s great political gifts is his moderate demeanor — cool, reasoned, self-contained. It masks the frank immoderation of everything about his final push on health-care reform.

His liberal admirers call him a centrist. He hasn’t tried to pass a single-payer system, has he? But Obama is in Washington, not Ottawa. Single-payer couldn’t possibly pass. Nor could the public option, which Obama supported until it reached its absolute expiration date. These aren’t principled acts of centrism; they are unexceptional adjustments to reality.

I think Rich is right on the substance. Obama is firmly on record believing that the best system would be single-payer. He just can't get there in one leap.

But put the substance aside. During both the highs and lows of the Bush years there was a fairly constant conversation about how the secret to Bush's initial success was that he was the sort of guy you might want to have a beer with. In the money primary and the real one,  Bush managed to signal to the Christian right that he was  "one of us" without turning off moderates.  The Texas accent, the faith, the family, the body language: all of these things combined to form a potent political personality. Some people liked it, others hated it (remember all the whining about his Texas swagger?). I can't tell you how many conservatives would send me furious email after I would criticize Bush along the lines of "you just don't like real Americans!"

The same thing was true with Clinton. Some people just took an instant dislike to the guy. Others swooned. That's how it often works in politics and life: personality matters. Many on the left couldn't see Bush's moderation because they couldn't see past his personality, many on the right couldn't see past Clinton's centrism for the same reason. This, of course, is only a partial explanation, but pretty much every explanation is only partial.

What I find amusing is that a lot of people think this is a real phenomenon, but it only explains other peoples' attraction to, or repulsion from, a candidate. I remember sitting with two very nice, older,  liberal academics who took me out for a drink after a speech last year. They completely understood — and detested - the "have a beer with Bush" dynamic. But when I explained that I thought at least some of Obama's support stemmed from a very similar "have a chablis with Obama" dynamic, they were aghast. No, no, no we like him because he's so smart, he's so pragmatic, his policies are empirical, his values humane. They were vaguely willing to concede that his race was a plus, but only by way of insisting that it was a minus for pretty much anyone who disliked Obama.

It's always seemed obvious to me that a lot of Obama's supporters, including many of the so-called "ObamaCons," were simply charmed by the guy. Their pro-Obama arguments were often little more than rationalizations for personal feelings. Even now, it seems that a lot of the "Obama is a centrist" argument is based not on his actual policies or principles (or history) but simply on the fact that, gosh, he sounds so reasonable! (And certainly some of the overwhelming support Obama enjoys from the black community isn't purely grounded in policy substance).

This is why Obama has so much to lose if he persists in making such a boor of himself. His personal approval ratings have been trending higher than his policies throughout his presidency. As he becomes less likable, there's not a lot for the Democrats to fall back on. The White House communication shop's "cowbell" strategy shows that they don't how to sell anything on the merits. They're selling Obama selling the merits. It's the celebrity endorsement style of political argumentation, and it's getting stale.

03/19 09:33 AM Share

The Right to Adultery?   [Maggie Gallagher]

Excerpts from my syndicated column inspired by Rielle Hunter’s GQ spread:

There’s something wrong with a society that permits adultery to become a pathway to commercial success.

Adultery involves twin offenses: (1) the violation by a married person of his or her vows; and (2) a third party’s decision to invade another person’s marriage, to seek their own personal satisfaction at the expense of the unknowing and unconsenting spouse.

“You can’t legislate morality,” we are always told. Maybe not, but perhaps we could come up with a way to encourage a little common decency. On behalf of the injured wives, is there really nothing we can do to throw a little sand on the wheels of their marketing machines?

Currently we offer the person most injured by adultery — the innocent spouse — only one legal option for redress: the nuclear option of exploding her own family through divorce. I understand why women might choose that option, but not why we are so unwilling to give them any other option.

I do not want to pin a scarlet “A” on the breast of every man or woman who has sinned. I want something much more modest. I want people who commit this moral trespass to have the decency not to attempt to profit from it in the national media.

Here’s what I’m guessing: We have some of the tools right now to stop it, if we wanted to use them. Some of the men hooking up through Web sites that advertise adultery probably live in states where adultery is still technically against the law, or where torts of criminal conversation or alienation of affection exist. An injured spouse or an aggressive state attorney general could make a case out of this.

But we could also update these older torts of adultery with new language that makes explicit that commercial enterprises that intentionally and explicitly attempt to profit from acts of adultery expose themselves to lawsuits by the injured wife and children. For that matter, why isn’t commercially soliciting for adultery as much of a crime as soliciting for prostitution?

People do bad things. We can’t always stop them. But we could prevent them from turning adultery into a business model.

03/19 09:17 AM Share

Actual Enumeration   [Mark Krikorian]

I have a piece in today's USA Today distilling my Corner posts on answering "American" to the census race question. The editor, while writing the paper's own editorial on the subject (mine was the "opposing view"), called the Census Bureau yesterday and asked what they'd do with "American" responses. She was told, as I'd expected, that they'd just impute the race — i.e., make up their own answer based on various factors, like where you live.

This prompted a thought, maybe for Hans von Spakovsky or Roger Clegg: The Supreme Court has said the Bureau can't impute the existence of people who didn't send in forms when giving the head count for purposes of reapportionment of House (and state legislature) seats; the Democrats had wanted to do that, figuring it would give them several extra congressmen. Based on that precedent, is there a constitutional challenge to be made to imputing respondents' race? That information is, after all, also used in reapportionment to make sure as many black Democratic voters as possible are packed into a single district to ensure the election of more Republicans (not how supporters would describe it, but that's what it does). If you can't make up people, can you make up people's races?

03/19 09:13 AM Share

Victor Davis Hanson - Man of War   [Peter Robinson]

Today on Uncommon Knowledge, Victor Davis Hanson, military historian and author of Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern, explains how his own life story has informed his approach to war.

I was brought up on a farm. My father participated in bombing Tokyo in the second World War. He taught me that the United States has never claimed to be perfect. It’s just better than the alternative, and if you don’t believe that it’s better than the alternative, there’s no reason for it to continue, really. That idea — that humans are not perfect and they make mistakes, but of enduring and adjudicating the mistakes, of correcting them, and having some tolerance for human frailty — that idea is very important not only in war, but also in farming and in the human experience itself. This prevalent utopianism that now characterizes our society — it has become a new barbarism in which we insist on perfectionism or else we’re no good.

Click here.

 

03/19 09:10 AM Share

Right Hand, Left Hand   [Andrew Stuttaford]

"We have to revive this economy and rebuild it stronger than before. And making sure that folks have the opportunity and incentive to save – for a home or college, for retirement or a rainy day — is essential to that effort. "

March 18 (Bloomberg) — Democratic congressional leaders would raise to 3.8 percent the Obama administration’s proposed new Medicare tax on investment income to generate an estimated $210 billion to help fund a health-care overhaul plan.

03/19 09:10 AM Share

The Sell-Out on Gitmo Is Nigh   [Andy McCarthy]

It's the Gang of 14 revisited.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sen. Lindsey Graham and the White House are close to a deal that would close Guantanamo Bay in exchange for some amorphous concessions on the legal proceedings to which terrorist detainees will be subjected.

The Journal says two other Senate Republicans (not identified) are prepared to join Graham in breaking ranks, which ensures that the pact will be filibuster-proof.

There's not much more I can say beyond what I've already said (see here and here) about what a disaster this will be for our national security. Senator Graham will try to spin it as a great result — just as the Gang of 14 compromise was spun, despite its acquiescence in the Left's torpedoing of several qualified Bush nominees, leaving unfilled slots that Obama is now filling with his kind of judges. It will be a terrible result.

The good parts of the deal will be either things we'd have gotten anyway (like no civilian trial for KSM) or unenforceable (like promises that the Obama administration will be more open to using options other than the criminal justice system for top terrorists). The bad parts will be horrific, and no matter what Senator Graham says, he can't do a thing about them: The place or places where the terrorists are held will become targets that we will have to spend tons of money to protect; the tons of money we have already spent to make Gitmo a first-rate, ideally secured facility, will be lost; and, most significantly, the physical presence in the U.S. of the detainees will mean they are unquestionably in the jurisdiction of the federal courts, where judges will be able to say the Constitution requires all sorts of remedies, including release.

And remember, all of this will be based on the fiction that Gitmo foments anti-U.S. terrorism — and to the extent the U.S. reputation in the world has been tarnished, much more of that has been done by the politicians who've attacked Gitmo than by the facility itself, which is a model.

03/19 09:08 AM Share

'That's Not Cool'   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Rick Santorum, who is sitting across from me in Bill Bennett's Virginia radio studio, just said that as we read this AP piece:

CINCINNATI — A Democratic Ohio congressman said a group opposed to health care overhaul went too far by taking out a newspaper ad that included a large photo of him with his two young daughters.

Rep. Steve Driehaus was upset by the advertisement, which appeared Wednesday in The Cincinnati Enquirer, his spokesman said Thursday.

"Rep. Driehaus thought the ad was outrageous," said the spokesman, Tim Mulvey. "He can take more than his fair share of political attacks, but this one crossed the line."

The ad was paid for by the Committee to Rethink Reform, a Washington-based group. Committee spokeswoman Sarah Longwell said showing the children was a mistake and that the group was taking out another ad to apologize. She said the committee already apologized directly to Driehaus.

I don't know that group — and they may have meant no ill-will — but I do know we have no time for such unnecessary and inappropriate distractions. Stick to speaking to and of your on-the-fence member, and on the issues.

03/19 08:14 AM Share

Annals of Engagement: Iran Still Arming Taliban in Afghanistan   [Andy McCarthy]

From the U.K. Telegraph:

Border officials have reported that a wide range of material made in Iran – including mortars, plastic explosives, propaganda materials and mobile phones – is ending up in insurgents' hands.

Rahmutallah Safi, the head of Border Police in Herat, an Afghan city on its western border with Iran, said seized material was marked with Persian writing, Channel 4 News reported last night.

"In this place you can see, we have discovered five mines," he said. "All the international monitors have seen it. You yourselves can check to see which country has made it. You can see the [Persian] marks on the weapons and the type and show it to the world."

A Taliban commander admitted that the insurgents had grown more dependent on Iran as Pakistan stepped up operations against the group on its territory.

"Day by day the Iranian border becomes more important for us," he said. "Especially now in Pakistan there are many problems for the Taliban and many of the Taliban have been imprisoned and also they arrest any Taliban who comes out of the[religious schools].

Not to worry, though. A NATO spokesman says Iran's support for the Taliban is only "limited."

03/19 07:51 AM Share

Raging Brooks   [Jonah Goldberg]

David Brooks:

Deem and pass? Are you kidding me? Is this what the Revolutionary War was fought for? Is this what the boys on Normandy beach were trying to defend? Is this where we thought we would end up when Obama was speaking so beautifully in Iowa or promising to put away childish things?

Yes, I know Republicans have used the deem and pass technique. It was terrible then. But those were smallish items. This is the largest piece of legislation in a generation and Pelosi wants to pass it without a vote. It’s unbelievable that people even talk about this with a straight face. Do they really think the American people are going to stand for this? Do they think it will really fool anybody if a Democratic House member goes back to his district and says, “I didn’t vote for the bill. I just voted for the amendments.” Do they think all of America is insane?

And:

Yes, my own view may be distorted by the fact that I’m disappointed in the health care bill. But at least I violently opposed the nuclear option when the Republicans tried it a few years ago. I don’t think it is mere partisanship that makes me believe that representatives should have the guts to actually vote for the legislation they want to become law.

Either this whole city has gone insane or I have or both. But I’m out here on the ledge and I’m not coming in the window. In my view this is no longer about health care. It’s just Democrats wanting to pass a bill, any bill, and shredding anything they have to in order to get it done. It’s about taking every sin the Republicans committed when they were busy being corrupted by power and matching it with interest.

03/19 07:28 AM Share

Mark Levin Interviews Paul Ryan   [Andy McCarthy]

Of all the people in government, Paul Ryan may be the ablest guy on our team against Obamacare, and I'm grateful we have him. Sometimes, though, he slips too easily into wonk-speak, to the detriment of clarity and impact. Not last night, though. Listen to this interview of Rep. Ryan by Mark Levin. Mark was great — slowed the congressman down in all the right spots so that the inside-baseball of double-counting and other Obama budget and procedural chicanery came clear. Really well done . . . and fury-making.

03/19 06:47 AM Share

We Don’t Need to ‘Get Over the Sanctions Delusion’   [Mario Loyola]

Over at Foreign Policy, Lara Friedman recommends “getting over the sanctions delusion” and predicts that the Iran Refined Petroleum Act now making its way through Congress — a set of unilateral sanctions targeted at Iran’s refined gasoline imports from across the Persian Gulf — will probably fail. Her argument is worth examining; in addition to being both novel and deeply misguided, it raises an important point.

Noting that supporters of stiffer Iran sanctions “triumphantly” raise the success of sanctions against South Africa as an example in their favor, Lara sees a crucial difference, because

South Africa is the one case where sanctions were about supporting the self-identified interests of a large portion of that country’s population. In every other case, sanctions have been about promoting US interests, not the interests of the people bearing their brunt. We sanctioned the Castro regime because we refused to tolerate Communism so close to home. We sanctioned Gaza because we rejected any dealings with Hamas. We sanctioned Iraq because we decided that Saddam Hussein had become an irredeemable enemy of the US. We started sanctioning Iran because we decided that the Iranian regime was beyond the pale. And — no surprise — in every case except South Africa, the populations that were expected to rise up and act as tools of US foreign policy obstinately refused to cooperate.

Lara is right to distinguish South Africa from these other cases, but she draws entirely the wrong distinction. Her point is a variation on “blame America first” and may be paraphrased as follows: In South Africa sanctions had a humanitarian purpose, in solidarity with the wishes of the South African people, whereas in the other cases sanctions were motivated by U.S. interests in an exercise of imperialist realpolitik.

But those who have supported sanctions against Cuba, Gaza, Iraq, and Iran were also motivated by humanitarian concerns, in many cases quite centrally and passionately. Conservatives tend to see humanitarianism and the pursuit of U.S. interests abroad — properly understood — as generally consonant aims. In Cuba, Saddam’s Iraq, and Iran (and perhaps even Gaza) people have been unable “to rise up and act as tools of US foreign policy” (i.e., liberate themselves) not because they didn’t want to, but because they were and are terrified. Actually, in Iraq, they did rise up, and they were crushed. In Cuba, hundreds of thousands decided that their chances were better if they risked probable death on inner tubes and rickety boats trying to cross the Florida Straits — arriving with stories of terror and a loathing of Castro that easily match what the victims of apartheid felt towards that regime. The people of Cuba and Iraq might well have had “self-expressed” widespread opposition to their regimes — and solidarity with U.S. policy — if their countries’ respective terror police had not been so effective in silencing them.

Keep reading this post . . .

03/19 06:45 AM Share

Invisible Man Who Can Sing in a Visible Voice   [John J. Miller]

I first heard about Alex Chilton because the Replacements sang about him. Then I discovered Big Star, his band. I came to enjoy Big Star, though, in truth, I've enjoyed bands said to be "influenced by Big Star" even more. "Jesus Christ" is a good song; the cover version by Teenage Fanclub goes into heavy rotation at my house each Christmas. Chilton died on Wednesday, age 59. The tributes have started, even on the floor of Congress.

03/19 05:26 AM Share

Justice . . . Mercy . . . a Fog Over Virginia?   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

A man guilty of murder and rape was executed last night. It was a night a family was understandably waiting for. But is there actually peace there? Is that justice? Or is it a chipping away at just that?

03/19 04:09 AM Share

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Phew: Cao Is a No   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

From a local NOLA TV station:

Noting that the Senate bill is "much weaker than the version we passed through the House" in regard to abortion, Cao said he intended to vote against it.

Cao, appearing on "WDSU News at 4," said he could still vote "yes" on a health care reform package that was more restrictive on abortions.He said his office has been flooded with calls and visits from those on both sides of the health care issue."We have people knocking at our doors, we have groups coming in, lobbying," he said. "It comes down to me and my own conscience and that's what I have to deal with."

03/18 07:47 PM Share

'If You Don't Know What You Stand For . . .'   [Mark Steyn]

Paul Bremer, lately America's viceroy in Baghdad, is sounding positively Steynian in this analysis of Europe for The Stanford Review:

Both the Pope and Huntington are correct. It is a fact of history that Europe is based on Judeo-Christian values. But Europe seems unwilling, or perhaps afraid, to acknowledge this reality. . . . If you don’t know what you stand for, you cannot easily figure out how to defend it.

European countries have a large, and in most places, growing Muslim population. The vast majority of these men and women are not terrorists. But as events have shown, there are among them extremists who reject everything the West and Europe stand for. . . .

Europe also faces a demographic time bomb. The population of every major European country is falling. This will place unsustainable burdens on the elaborate and expensive welfare programs built up over the decades. As the Muslim populations grow in proportion to overall populations, it is vital that Europe find a way to integrate peaceful Muslims while defeating extremists.

For all of these reasons, the Atlantic Alliance, so long the keystone to American and Western security, will find itself under significant strain in the years ahead.

That thesis has been part of the cultural conversation for some years, thanks to a handful of writers on both sides of the Atlantic. But, as Tony Blair told Martin Amis not too long ago, it's not yet part of the political conversation: Very few prominent office-holders in Europe or North America are willing to talk openly about what one senior U.S. official conceded privately was the biggest "paradigm shift" since the start of the Cold War. I wonder how many other current and recently retired figures from the war on terror think like Mr. Bremer.

03/18 07:19 PM Share

Show Me the Money, Cont'd   [Daniel Foster]

The always worthwhile Megan McArdle has her own take on the CBO report. In the same spirit as I wondered whether Ezra Klein literally believes, as a matter of fact, that Obamacare will cut health costs and reduce the deficit, McArdle doubts whether Democrats believe (or even care) that they can keep the bill's fiscal promises.

On the topic of the Cadillac Tax:

The proposed changes increase spending dramatically, most heavily concentrated in the out-years.  The gross cost of the bill has risen from $875 billion to $940 billion over ten years—but almost $40 billion of that comes in 2019.  The net cost has increased even more dramatically, from $624 billion to $794 billion.  That's because the excise tax has been so badly weakened.  This is of dual concern: it's a financing risk, but it also means that the one provision which had a genuine shot at "bending the cost curve" in the broader health care market has at this point, basically been gutted.  Moreover, it's hard not to believe that the reason it has been moved to 2018 is that no one really thinks it's ever going to take effect. It's one thing to have a period of adjustment.  But a tax that takes effect in eight years is a tax so unpopular that it has little realistic chance of being allowed to stand.

Ultimately, this rests on the question: are we really going to cut Medicare?  If we're not, this gargantuan new entitlement is going to end up costing us about $200 billion a year next decade, which even in government terms is an awful lot of money.  There are offsetting taxes, but they're either trivial or likely to be unpopular—look forward to a 4% rent increase when your landlord has to stump over the same amount for the new tax on rents.  Then look forward to repeal of same.

I think this is a fiscal disaster waiting to happen.  But no one on the other side cares, so I'm not sure how much point there is in saying that any more.

03/18 07:00 PM Share

Meet the New Plan, Same as the Old Plan   [Mark Krikorian]

I'm traveling and don't have much time, but I noticed that Senators Schumer and Graham have a piece in the Post laying out their "draft framework" for an immigration bill. Hey, I thought to myself, maybe they've resolved some of the disputes among the various pro-amnesty factions that had been delaying the presentation of a bill. Eagerly anticipating some new development or formulation I made the time to read the op-ed all the way through.

Nothing.

No specifics whatsoever. I thought I was reading an op-ed from 2001 (or 2002 or 2003 or 2004 or . . .). It's just the same grand bargain of amnesty and increased immigration in exchange for promises of future enforcement (their version includes a biometric national ID card), without any details about how legalization would work or how many indentured servants would be provided to cheap-labor employers each year. It's not clear why the Post even agreed to publish the piece, other than it seemed salient in anticipation of Sunday's illegal-alien-palooza on the Mall. Until labor agrees to support an indentured labor program for "temporary" workers, business isn't going to back any bill and nothing's going to move. Wake me when something happens.

03/18 06:10 PM Share

It’s Now or Never   [Ed Whelan]

If you want to make your voice heard on the health-care bill before the House votes on Sunday, you’d better do so quickly. To make things easier for you, here, organized in alphabetical order by state, are the 40 key Democratic members of Congress whom Jeff Anderson and Andy Wickersham identified in a Critical Condition post last week, together with their direct Capitol Hill office phone numbers. (I haven’t kept track of all the developments since then, but it would be useful to congratulate or berate your member, as you see fit, if he or she has firmly adopted a position.)

 

The “(S)” means that the member voted for the Stupak amendment last fall.

 

The full House phone directory is here.

 

“Yes” on Obamacare Last Time but Might Want to Switch:

 

Gabrielle Giffords, (D., Ariz.)—202-225-2542

Ann Kirkpatrick, (D., Ariz.)—202-225-2315

Harry Mitchell, (D., Ariz.)—202-225-2190  

Vic Snyder, (D., Ariz.) (S)—202-225-2506  

Marion Berry, (D., Ark.) (S)—202-225-4076

John Salazar, (D., Colo.) (S)—202-225-4761

Melissa Bean, (D., Ill.) —202-225-3711

Bill Foster, (D., Ill.) —202-225-2976

Joe Donnelly, (D., Ind.) (S) —202-225-3915

Brad Ellsworth, (D., Ind.) (S) —202-225-4636

Baron Hill, (D., Ind.) (S) —202-225-5315

Bart Stupak, (D., Mich.) (S) —202-225-4735

Michael Arcuri, (D., N.Y.) —202-225-3665

Tim Bishop, (D., N.Y.) —202-225-3826

Bob Etheridge, (D., N.C.) (S) —202-225-4531

Earl Pomeroy, (D., N.D.) (S) —202-225-2611

Steve Driehaus, (D., Ohio) (S) —202-225-2216

Zach Space, (D., Ohio) (S) —202-225-6265

Charlie Wilson, (D., Ohio) (S) —202-225-5705

Chris Carney, (D., Pa.) (S) —202-225-3731

Kathleen Dahlkemper, (D., Pa.) (S) —202-225-5406

John Spratt, (D., S.C.) (S) —202-225-5501

Ciro Rodriguez, (D., Texas) (S) —202-225-4511

Solomon Ortiz, (D., Texas) (S) —202-225-7742

Tom Perriello, (D., Va.) (S) —202-225-4711

Alan Mollohan, (D., W.Va.) (S) —202-225-4172

Nick Rahall, (D., W.Va.) (S) —202-225-3452

 

“No” on Obamacare Last Time But Might Need Encouragement:

 

Mike Ross, (D., Ark.) (S) —202-225-3772

Betsy Markey, (D., Colo.) —202-225-4676

Allen Boyd, (D., Fla.) —202-225-5235

Suzanne Kosmas, (D., Fla.) —202-225-2706

John Barrow, (D., Ga.) (S) —202-225-2823

John Adler, (D., N.J.) —202-225-4765

Michael McMahon, (D., N.Y.) —202-225-3371

Scott Murphy, (D., N.Y.) —202-225-5614

Larry Kissell, (D., N.C.) —202-225-3715

John Boccieri, (D., Ohio) (S) —202-225-3876

John Tanner, (D., Tenn.) (S) —202-225-4714

Glenn Nye, (D., Va.) —202-225-4215

Brian Baird, (D., Wash.) —202-225-3536

03/18 05:53 PM Share

Exclusive: House Minority Leader John Boehner on the Health-Care Vote   [Robert Costa]

EXCLUSIVE — Rep. John Boehner (R., Ohio), the House minority leader, tells National Review Online that as of late Thursday afternoon, Democratic leadership “still doesn’t have the votes” to pass their health-care bill, and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) is “prepared to sacrifice her members, and her speakership, so that she can plant the flag of universal health care in the ground.” Boehner says this weekend will be a waiting game — “If the speaker doesn’t have 216 votes locked down, she will not go to the floor. If she’s short, she knows that there is no way she can pick up two or three votes on the floor.” On that same point, he admits that “if this comes to the floor, it’s already over . . . though I still don’t know how she can get there [to 216]. . . . I’d never put myself in this box.”

“The right is mad, the middle is mad, and the left is mad,” Boehner says. “They’ve made a calculation: They know they won’t get the right or middle, so they saying to their members that they need their left, because if they lose the left, their base will sit home. The president is staying in town because he knows the left will kill him if he’s not here to help.”

Boehner adds that Pelosi has “made a big mistake by talking about this gimmicky way to pass this without having a real vote.” President Obama, he says, “has put all of his marbles, literally all of his marbles, on jamming through something the people don’t want” and has “arrogantly misjudged this entire issue from the start.” Here’s why, Boehner says: “The Left sees this as their best opportunity in 50 years to put their stamp on the direction of this country.”

Boehner believes that abortion will be the key complication for on-the-fence Democrats in the final hours. “I’ve always thought that this would be the issue,” he says. “This is public funding for abortion. They know it can’t be fixed. There just aren’t the votes in the Senate.” He says he respects pro-life congressman Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) for holding firm, but cautions that he “never thought that Stupak could hold ten to twelve votes.”

Boehner says there will be major political consequences for pro-life Democrats who break from the Stupak bloc. “Take [Rep.] Steve Driehaus, for example,” he says. “He may be a dead man. He can’t go home to the west side of Cincinnati. The Catholics will run him out of town.”

If Boehner is “lucky enough to become speaker,” he says he plans to work to repair the “damage to the institution” that the health-care debate has caused over the past year. “It will be different,” he pledges. “We’d run this different than how it is run today, and from how my predecessors ran it. We’ve got to make this government smaller and less costly. There are big problems to address. It’s been shocking how people have been paying attention to the process, and we’ve noticed. We’ll repeal this — we’ll put a bill on the floor to take out the Medicare cuts, the tax increases, and the individual mandates.”

A final message for the weekend? “Kill the bill, just kill the bill,” he says. To do that, he says the NRCC is running a “Code Red” project, robocalls are going out, and members are going on local radio shows and hosting telephone town halls — in Democratic districts. “It’s all targeted,” he says.

03/18 05:42 PM Share

Obamacare and the Middle Class   [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Scott Gottlieb:

The hardest hit won't be those earning more than $250,000 a year—the group that he says needs to "pay their fair share." Rather, it's families whose combined annual income is around $100,000 who could be crushed under this plan.

These folks will be too "rich" to qualify for ObamaCare's subsidies, but probably too poor to easily afford the pricey insurance that the president's plan forces them to buy.

Many of these $100K families will be obliged to buy a policy costing an average of $14,700 for the mid-level, "silver" health plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office's estimates. After income taxes, they'll be spending almost a quarter of their net income for health insurance.

03/18 05:32 PM Share

CBO on $1.2 Trillion: ‘No’   [Robert VerBruggen]

Over at Critical Condition, Hanns Kuttner notes that while the Democrats attribute their claim that health-care reform will cut the deficit by $1.2 trillion in its second ten years to the Congressional Budget Office, this estimate is nowhere to be found in the CBO report itself. It seems that the Democrats took the CBO’s estimate that deficit reduction could fall “in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP,” matched it up to some estimates of GDP in 2020–2029, and attributed their back-of-the-envelope math to the CBO itself.

I e-mailed a source within the CBO to ask if they had arrived at the $1.2 trillion figure themselves. The source e-mailed back one word: “No.”

03/18 05:26 PM Share

Republicans Should File This Quote Away   [Ramesh Ponnuru]

From last Sunday's New York Times Magazine:

“Rahm thinks bipartisanship is a way to get what you want — to fake bipartisanship to get what you want,” a senior administration official told me. “He understands that’s a better way to get things done than to be nakedly partisan.”

03/18 05:20 PM Share

From No to Yes   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Tennessee "Blue Dog" Bart Gordon says he will support the bill.

Bart Stupak, on Hardball just now, says that he is "not surprised" by that announcement.

03/18 05:12 PM Share

Judging Obamacare and the Prescription-Drug Plan   [Ramesh Ponnuru]

One claim I've heard repeatedly from liberals during the health-care debate is that Republicans have no standing to complain about the dubious financing of Obamacare because the prescription-drug benefit they enacted in 2003 did not even attempt to pay for itself. (Jonathan Chait uses this argument to take a swipe at Michael Gerson today.) Now, if the Republicans are right that Obamacare will add to future deficits, the fact that they added to deficits in the past hardly invalidates their point.

But I think the context of the two debates also makes the comparison inapposite. A prescription-drug benefit was going to be enacted given its massive popularity. The Democrats had their own bill, which was twice as expensive and also unpaid for. Not passing the Republican bill would probably have led to even higher spending. An overhaul of the health-care system isn't nearly as popular, and the Republicans aren't pushing a twice-as-expensive alternative. Killing Obamacare will help keep deficits down—again, if the Republicans are right about the bill's financing. If they're wrong, on the other hand, then that's the argument to use against them and the prescription-drug comparison is superfluous.

P.S. Great Gerson line: "Politicians claiming the idealism of saints have adopted the tactics of burglars."

03/18 04:50 PM Share

National Health Care and Abortion, Ctd.   [Michael J. New]

On RhRealityCheck, Robin Marty attempts to take issue with my argument that universal health care will not reduce abortion rates. In particular, I argue that Tennessee's spending on TennCare during the 1990s coupled with its below-average abortion decline is good evidence that more generous health benefits will do little to reduce abortion rates.

Seeing that there is not much in the way of actual data to support her position, Marty decides to . . . change the subject! She turns her attention to pro-life laws. She states that since Tennessee has both parental-involvement laws and an informed-consent law, it should have seen its abortion rates drop quickly during the 1990s if my views are correct.

Marty's criticisms are weak. It is true that Tennessee did enact a parental-involvement law in the late 1990s. But since parental-involvement laws only have a direct effect on minors and since minors only account for 10-15 percent of all abortions, parental-involvement laws do not often have a large impact on overall abortion rates.

Keep reading this post . . .

03/18 04:29 PM Share

Diplo-Speak and Duplicity   [Cliff May]

Anyone who has spent time among diplomats knows that they are precise in their use of language. Indeed, diplomatic jargon is a kind of code.  

This is why Israelis were so shocked when Vice President Biden issued a statement using the word “condemn” in regard to an Israeli announcement of plans to build denser housing in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem. Biden might have expressed “concern” (although the Israelis thought they had the Obama administration’s consent for home construction in Jerusalem, as opposed to the West Bank where all construction has been suspended). But pronouncing the word “condemn” was bound to lead to a crisis in bilateral relations. Biden and his advisers must have known that.

In his interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, President Obama attempted to leave the impression that his administration is at least even-handed. He told Baier that “when there were riots by the Palestinians against a synagogue that had been reopened, we condemned them in the same way.”

However, as Jennifer Rubin points out here and here, that’s simply not true:

On March 16 (the day to which the president refers), the State Department spokesman had this to say: “As we said yesterday, we are concerned about statements that could potentially risk incitement because we recognize that there’s a great deal of tension in the region right now.”…

So where has the U.S. “condemned” the Palestinian violence? Not in any public briefing or statement so far.

Even if we did hold the Palestinians to the same standard as we do Israel, is a housing announcement concerning the Israeli capital really equivalent to a call to violence? That’s the question being ignored.

The Obama administration did not even “condemn” last week’s naming of a square in the West Bank for a terrorist who slaughtered Israeli women and children, as well as an American. My NRO column today discusses this, and what should be the obvious reason that no peace process can succeed at present.

03/18 04:25 PM Share

I Am Speaking in Scottsdale, Ariz., This Weekend   [Veronique de Rugy]

The Mercatus Center is having its annual retreat in Scottsdale starting tomorrow until Sunday. I am sure the resort is beautiful, but more importantly, I know that there will be many interesting speakers like George Mason University's Russ Roberts and Tyler Cowen, and John Steele Gordon, historian and author of An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power.

I will be speaking, too — mainly about spending, national debt, and a host of very depressing issues!

If you are in the area and would like to attend, contact Julie Burden (jburden2@gmu.edu). I am sure she will be willing to discount the fee.

03/18 04:21 PM Share

Upside Down   [Daniel Foster]

03/18 03:53 PM Share

Here’s What’s Happening in Florida This Sunday   [Jack Fowler]

Jay Nordlinger says it best, but in case you didn’t read his new Impromptus (shame on you!), I’ll share the relevant section:

My homeboy Ignat Solzhenitsyn will be performing in Florida over the weekend — performing in a couple of senses. Ignat, you may know, is the middle son of the writer, and a pianist and conductor. He will be at Stetson University in DeLand — yes, named after the man responsible for the hat. (The school nickname is the Hatters.) On Sunday, Ignat will give a lecture entitled “One Life to Live: Choice and Free Will in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Then, putting on the hat of pianist, he will give a concert-lecture: presenting some Schubert. I am to introduce him at one of these events, I believe. Both events are free and open to the public. For more information, go here.

Those in Central Florida (more or less) have an opportunity to meet an extraordinary person — extraordinary intellectually, musically, and otherwise. I might also mention that Ignat is the university’s Lawson Lecturer, and that the Lawson program is endowed by my dear friend, and National Review’s dear friend, Martha Apgar. She is an extraordinary person, too.

03/18 03:51 PM Share

Bad Math   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

A press release — signed by a Catholic religious sister — released just now from the bishops' conference questions the storyline the media ran with yesterday about "59,000 nuns" supporting this health-care legislation being pushed through Congress by the White House.

Keep reading this post . . .

03/18 03:49 PM Share

Krauthammer's Take   [NRO Staff]

On President Obama's answer in the Bret Baier interview about the double-counting of Medicare savings:

I do believe that's the first time the president has been challenged on the claim he has made over and over again that this will — the half a trillion he is taking out of Medicare will both be used to reduce the cost of the health-care entitlement and extend the life of Medicare.

He has said over and over again. It was raised once by Ryan — Paul Ryan — in the [president's] meeting with Republicans. But the president never answered it. So this is the first time, I do believe, he has ever answered it.

And it was really quite clever the way he tried to, but extremely unconvincing. What he said is, well, some of the money will be spent on older folks by closing what's called the doughnut hole in Medicaid drug prescription benefits.

Well, yes. But that is still money spent in every year. That is, in fact, a new kind of entitlement in drug insurance for the elderly. It still is not money that you would put away, which is the only way that you could extend the life of Medicare.

So he tried to say: I'm spending it on old folks, at least a part of it — but that doesn't answer the issue. If you spend it on the young or the uninsured or the old, it's spent. It's not saved, so it cannot extend the life of Medicare. . . . 

If you can't solve the extension-of-Medicare issue, you shouldn't be going around saying over and over again that what you [are] solving at least a part of it. It [Obamacare] doesn't. It makes it worse.

03/18 03:48 PM Share

Tomorrow on NROriginals   [NR Staff]

Some wonderful articles (including a great look at a Dan Rather Love-umentary on Fidel) from the April 30, 1976 issue of National Review await you in tomorrow’s edition of NROriginals. Sign up for it (and all our terrific free newsletters) here.

03/18 03:42 PM Share

The Whip Count   [Shannen Coffin]

I've been of the mind all week that this was a done deal for Dems. But I'm starting to have doubts today. A president doesn't cancel an overseas trip to do a victory dance on a bill that still needs to be reconciled. So Nancy Pelosi's "this is a historic moment" explanation doesn't fly. Word that the Dems are working on the only Republican to support the House Bill, Representative Cao from New Orleans, is also a sign that things are amiss in the Obama camp. Word that Massachusetts union lackey Stephen Lynch is a "no" is not a good sign. So while there is a sound and fury coming from the Dem camp, does it really signify anything? 

03/18 03:34 PM Share

Threats and Dems in the Opposition   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

I just received this e-mail about Rep. Lynch, but have received similar e-mails this week about other members. Many readers say they are happy to promise to make a campaign donation to any Democrat who votes against the health-care bill if he is primary challenged over health-care:

K-Lo,

 

This Scott Brown voter just emailed Lynch’s office promising a campaign donation if his opposition to the bill gets him a primary challenger. 

 

Something to think about for all undecided Democrats?

03/18 03:28 PM Share

Student Loan Add-On Includes Special Deal for North Dakota   [Stephen Spruiell]

They're already calling it the Bismarck Bribe:

The legislation contains provisions apparently designed to ensure votes from wavering Democrats. As outlined in the House version, the compromise plan would give nonprofit loan providers in several states the right to participate, along with for-profit loan companies selected through a competitive process, in helping the Education Department distribute loan money to students.

A new element, included in the plan issued on Thursday, would give a specific right to the Bank of North Dakota to issue federally subsidized student loans, meaning that it would be the only lender remaining outside of the Education Department's direct-lending system.

The Bank of North Dakota is a state-owned lender that Democratic aides described as representing the type of nonprofit entity they want to encourage. Critics of the loan bill suggested the provision was designed to win the support of a key Democrat, Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

03/18 03:18 PM Share

Show Me the Money   [Daniel Foster]

How did the Democrats get the CBO score they wanted, the score that has liberals running a victory lap around the blogosphere?

The short answers seems to be: with more of the same gadget plays that got us the “deficit reduction” in earlier versions of Obamacare.

If you are a regular reader of the Corner, you are already intimately acquainted with the Medicare double-counting. But it doesn't stop there. Consider that $53 billion of the $118 billion in supposed savings over the first ten years of the latest bill (which is still a moving target) comes from increases in Social Security payroll tax revenues resulting from expected increases in wages (the idea being that employers will pay better in an Obamacare world). But even if it materializes, pegging that money to deficit reduction instead of to the continued solvency of Social Security is either naive, disingenuous or both. Likewise, the report counts as savings the estimated $70 billion in premiums to be colllected as part of a new government-run, long-term care program for the elderly. But just like premiums in the private sector, these funds will be used to pay out future benefits, not reduce the deficit.

Oh, and did we mention that the new bill borrows $19.1 billion in savings from the socialization of the student loan industry? (Savings that, as Stephen lays out, are independently dubious).

Of course, most of this is small fry compared to the biggest con of all: the front-loaded taxes that push most of the bill's costs outside the CBO's ten-year budget window. Consider: the bill spends $17 billion in its first four years, and $923 billion in its next six.

But none of this has stopped the usual suspects from trumpeting this preliminary report as a legislative king-maker. Take Ezra Klein:

If you're a liberal House Democrat, here's what you'd be voting against: Legislation that covers 32 million people. A world in which 95 percent of all non-elderly, legal residents have health-care coverage. An end to insurers rescinding coverage for the sick, or discriminating based on preexisting conditions, or spending 30 cents of each premium dollar on things that aren't medical care. Exchanges where insurers who want to jack up premiums will have to publicly explain their reason, where regulators will be able to toss them out based on bad behavior, and where consumers will be able to publicly rate them. Hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to help lower-income Americans afford health-care insurance. The final closure of the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit's "doughnut hole."

If you're a conservative House Democrat, then probably you support many of those policies, too. But you also get the single most ambitious effort the government has ever made to control costs in the health-care sector. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill cuts deficits by $130 billion in the first 10 years, and up to $1.2 trillion in the second 10 years. The excise tax is now indexed to inflation, rather than inflation plus one percentage point, and the subsidies grow more slowly over time. So one of the strongest cost controls just got stronger, and the automatic spending growth slowed. And then there are all the other cost controls in the bill: The Medicare Commission, which makes entitlement reform much more possible. The programs to begin paying doctors and hospitals for care rather than volume. The competitive insurance market.

This was a hard bill to write. Pairing the largest coverage increase since the Great Society with the most aggressive cost-control effort isn't easy. And since the cost controls are complicated, while the coverage increase is straightforward, many people don't believe that the Democrats have done it. But to a degree unmatched in recent legislative history, they have.

Maybe this is just one of those intractable attitudinal differences between rationalists and conservatives, but I wonder how Ezra Klein can possibly believe that what he is saying is settled fact. As if reality had a proven track record of conforming to progressives' most optimistic predictions about massive exertions of the welfare state.

The simple fact is that nobody knows what this bill will cost. That's due in part to the guarantee that history will intervene, in messy and unpredictable ways, over the next decade. And it is due in part to the fallibility of the lawyers and staffers who wrote it, and of the accountants who scored it. And it is due, in no small part, to the baroque lengths to which Congressional Democrats have gone in the name of obscurity.

03/18 03:15 PM Share

Charlie Wilson, All But Confirming His Yes Vote   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Ohio's Charlie Wilson just made a statement on that press call in support of the health-care legislation I mentioned earlier. "As a pro-life Catholic," he said, "I think the language in the Senate bill clearly ensures that there will be no federal funding of abortion."

He went on to say "I'm taking my time to review" the reconciliation language, but he ended his brief remarks by again stating: "I'm confident that the Senate language upholds my pro-life values."

If you read the bill differently and happen to have any influence with Congressman Wilson, you might want to have a chat with him, and quickly. It sounds like his definitive "yes" is imminent.

03/18 03:08 PM Share

Long Overdue   [Andrew Stuttaford]

03/18 02:50 PM Share

A Whip Count Going Around K Street   [Ramesh Ponnuru]

. . . has fewer than 30 undecideds, with Pelosi needing two-thirds. Don’t believe Democrats who say they’re within five.

03/18 02:49 PM Share

Nun Too Supportive   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

I'm hearing all about the left-leaning religious sisters' political group that supports the health-care legislation before Congress, but not-so-much about this release from a group of more than 100 traditional communities of Catholic sisters. These communities wear traditional habits and are undergoing such growth that many of them having waiting lists. The latter group, as you might guess, is standing with the bishops in opposition to the current legislation.

What's Catholic about Obamacare? Good question! My compendium and two cents are here.

03/18 02:46 PM Share

Lambs to the Slaughter   [Daniel Foster]

I'll be honest. I had started to wonder whether this Slaughter Rule business was a bait-and-switch. I couldn't imagine that, with the pounding Democratic leadership have taken over the deem-and-pass strategy, there was any profit left in pushing it. After all, the point was to provide Democrats with political cover, via procedural obscurity, for a vote in favor of the Senate bill. But the procedure is no longer obscure and the cover is now a fig leaf.

That's why I find it genuinely amazing that the House just defeated a Republican measure to block the Slaughter Rule by a vote 222 to 203.

03/18 02:29 PM Share

Thar She Blows   [Daniel Foster]

The reconciliation amendment is up and available on the House Rules Committee web site. And now the clock is ticking.

03/18 02:20 PM Share

What Does 'Reconciliation' Mean? Let’s Ask Saul Alinsky   [Andy McCarthy]

I thought this was an interesting passage from Rules for Radicals by Obama’s mentor, Saul Alinsky, on “reconciliation” in our “world of irrationality” — in which the pragmatic radical is instructed to work within the system to achieve revolution:

It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral; a world where “reconciliation” means that when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it, then we have reconciliation.

03/18 02:17 PM Share

Johanns: Abortion Debate Turns ‘Toxic’ in Congress   [Robert Costa]

Sen. Mike Johanns (R., Neb.) tells National Review Online that the abortion debate has become “toxic” in Congress thanks to the health-care debate. He says if the House “deems and schemes” this bill into law, then the chance to change the legislative language on abortion will, for some time, “effectively” be over, due to the number of pro-choice senators. “It rips up the Hyde amendment, just throws it away. The pro-choice forces see their opening, and they’re driving their tank through it.”

03/18 02:09 PM Share

GOP Doctor to Pelosi: 'Arrogant. Ignorant. Incompetent.'   [Daniel Foster]

During a press conference held by eleven Congressional GOP doctors today, Rep. Paul Broun (R., Ga.) had harsh words for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.)

“I have three simple questions Ms Pelosi,” said Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga. “Are you so arrogant that you think you know what’s best for the American people? Are you so ignorant that you are oblivious to the wishes of the American people? And are you so incompetent that you are going to ignore the Constitution of the United States, use tricks, deceptions, bald faced lies to try to ram down the throat of the American people something that they do not want and is going to be absolutely worse for their healthcare?”

We'll know the answer by Sunday.

03/18 01:38 PM Share