Now that the House and Senate have both passed separate health care reform bills, the legislative process shifts to ironing out the differences. This typically involves having a formal conference committee containing members of both the House and the Senate. The goal is to reconcile the two bills, creating a final bill that both chambers will vote on. In a surprise turn, according to Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic, Democrats intend to employ an obscure tactic, informally known as “ping-pong,” to shut Republicans out of the final negotiations and speed the bills toward completion. In “ping-pong” the legislation is bounced back and forth between the House and the Senate, controlled by just the Democratic leadership in each chamber and the White House, until a final agreement can be reached.

It’s “almost certain,” according to a pair of senior congressional staffers Cohn spoke to, that the Democratic leadership will seek to avoid a formal conference committee and its procedural steps. The formal process and additional votes would have offered multiple additional opportunities for the Republicans to slow or obstruct the bill’s process, as they did throughout the fall.

As one might expect, Republicans in Congress are aghast over the move. Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority leader John Boehner, told Yahoo! News that such a tactic would break President Obama’s campaign promise of health care debate transparency. He labeled the strategy a “disgrace”.

For more on this subject read the following:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts1044

http://www.californiahealthline.org/articles/2010/1/5/democrats-in-congress-aim-to-bypass-formal-conference-committee.aspx

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2010/01/04/congress-ping-pong-partisanship.aspx

http://www.redstate.com/brian_d/2010/01/05/obamacare-ping-pong/

Face Forward Comments:

Of course they are going to shut conservatives out of the negotiations.  Did anyone really expect the progressives to give any part of their march to wealth redistribution back?

There is fundamentally something wrong with any government that thinks of themselves as Robin Hood.   Do you really think that this government represents all of the people when they keep sending the message that they are robing from the rich to give to the poor?

To you liberals, let’s get something straight.  Robin Hood was a fictional character. Unfortunately, in this reality, the robbing from the poor tax payers is all too real.  Secondly, the thief (Robin) took from the government (Royal Politicians) to give back to the people that produced the goods and services (workers).  This time, the thief (Politicians) are taking from the producers (poor tax Payers)  to give to the non producers.  Sadly, the political Robin Hoods in government don’t have the same good (but misguided)  intentions as our fictional hero.  These thieves are not concerned about helping the poor but are concerned about keeping them impoverished so that they can keep themselves in power.  Robin Hood helped no one and this government is not helping either.

Consider this from Ayn Rands Book, “Atlas Shrugged”

 [Robin Hood] is not remembered as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became a symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, had demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors. It is this foulest of creatures – the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich – whom men have come to regard as the moral idea.” “. . . Do you wonder why the world is collapsing around us? That is what I am fighting, Mr. Rearden. Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive.”