Mary Katharine Ham notes that President Obama tells ABC:

“Let’s just clarify. I didn’t make a bunch of deals [on health care]. … There is a legislative process that is taking place in Congress and I am happy to own up to the fact that I have not changed Congress and how it operates the way I would have liked.”

But the Washington Post reported on December 20 that Obama’s top aides were involved in the negotiations with Nelson:

Schumer, who spent more than 13 hours in Reid’s office Friday, said the Medicaid issue was settled around lunchtime, and the final eight hours of the talks focused on the abortion language. Boxer estimated she spent seven hours in Reid’s offices — without ever once sitting in the same room, even though they were all of 25 steps apart.

Reid and Schumer kept up the “shuttle negotiation” between the leader’s conference room and his top aide’s office, Boxer said. Keenly aware how tense the talks were, the White House dispatched two aides who together have decades of experience in the Senate — Jim Messina and Peter Rouse — to work with Nelson. They relayed their intelligence to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who monitored the talks from a dinner in Georgetown.

Perhaps Messina and Rouse just showed up to provide the “Christmas cookies” that Reid and Schumer chowed down to sustain themselves during the tense negotiations, but it’s hard to believe that Obama’s aides didn’t sign off on both the abortion and Medicaid backroom deals.

Michelle Malkin sums it up:

The unmitigated chutzpah here is so blinding that I don’t just need sunglasses to protect my eyes. I need blackout curtains. Watch President Obama blame Congress for Demcare bribery and sabotage of transparency. As if Rahm and all the senior goons in the White House weren’t twisting arms and cracking heads to ensure that the deal met their boss’s timeline. As if the Cadillac tax break for unions hadn’t been hashed out at 1600 Pennsylvania.

For more on this story:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obama-pretends-he-didnt-sign-off-on-the-shady-health-care-deals-82699357.html

“Let’s just clarify. I didn’t make a bunch of deals [on health care]. … There is a legislative process that is taking place in Congress and I am happy to own up to the fact that I have not changed Congress and how it operates the way I would have liked.”  But the Washington Post reported on December 20 that Obama’s top aides were involved in the negotiations with Nelson.

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.”

President Obama: Federal Government ‘Will Go Bankrupt’ if Health Care Costs Are Not Reigned In

President Obama told ABC News’ Charles Gibson in an interview that if Congress does not pass health care legislation that will bring down costs, the federal government “will go bankrupt.”

The president laid out a dire scenario of what will happen if his health care reform effort fails.

 “If we don’t pass it, here’s the guarantee….your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you,” he said. “Potentially they’re going to drop your coverage, because they just can’t afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year. “

Charlie, Barack and the ABC propaganda machine

The president said that the costs of Medicare and Medicaid are on an “unsustainable” trajectory and if there is no action taken to bring them down, “the federal government will go bankrupt.”

“This actually provides us the best chance of starting to bend the cost curve on the government expenditures in Medicare and Medicaid,” Obama said.

Obama told Gibson that anybody who says they are concerned about the rising deficit or worried about tax increases in the future has to support this health care bill.

“Because if we don’t do this, nobody argues with the fact that health care costs are going to consume the entire federal budget,” the president said.

Obama is facing an increasingly skeptical American public when it comes to his push for health care reform.

For the rest of this scare tactic please go here:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/12/president-obama-federal-government-will-go-bankrupt-if-health-care-costs-are-not-reigned-in.html

Face Forward Comments:

Who the heck is this guy kidding?  The only people that care if America will go bankrupt are the tax payers, the people who built this country.  These individuals (you and I) know that we are the ones that will be forced (are being forced) to bail the country our by the sweat of our brow and our savings accounts. The parasites that have been living off of the fat of the land without contributing could care less. 

I’m not sure which companies Barack has been talking to but I don’t know of any company that got a 25% increase in health insurance cost.  I just checked with our HR department and the most ours have ever gone up in one year is 4.5%.  Just more scare tactics and propaganda from a man who is scared and is using the only skill set he knows.  Like the old saying goes, “If the only tool in your tool kit is a hammer, then everyone looks like a nail”!

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took his GOP-blasting rhetoric to a new level Monday, comparing Republicans who oppose health care reform to lawmakers who clung to the institution of slavery more than a century ago.

Dec. 6: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid talks to the media after the Senate Democratic caucus that President Obama attended on Capitol Hill in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took his GOP-blasting rhetoric to a new level Monday, comparing Republicans who oppose health care reform to lawmakers who clung to the institution of slavery more than a century ago.

The Nevada Democrat, in a sweeping set of accusations on the Senate floor, also compared health care foes to those who opposed women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement – even though it was Sen. Strom Thurmond, then a Democrat, who unsuccessfully tried to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and it was Republicans who led the charge against slavery.

Senate Republicans on Monday called Reid’s comments “offensive” and “unbelievable.”

But Reid argued that Republicans are using the same stalling tactics employed in the pre-Civil War era.

“Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, ’slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.’ If you think you’ve heard these same excuses before, you’re right,” Reid said Monday. “When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said ’slow down, it’s too early, things aren’t bad enough.’”

He continued: “When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn’t quite right.

For the rest of this article please go here:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/07/reid-compares-health-care-reform-foes-slavery-supporters/

Face Forward Comments:

I long ago gave up hope that politicians would hit the bottom of the mud pit and not fall any further into mire.  Once again, I can sleep in the knowledge that our political leadership will, when all else fails, resort to name calling and slinging mud.  I will have to give Harry Reid a thumbs up though, I would have never thought it possible that Opposing government owned health care could be equated to slavery.  Nice one, Harry.

I also find it amazing that the Democrats can point fingers at the Republicans with the words slavery on their lips.  As it was the democrats that tried to keep millions enslaved by trying to block civil rights legislation.  Welcome to American politics.