WASHINGTON — Digging in for a long struggle, Republican senators and governors assailed the majority Democrats’ newly minted health care legislation Thursday as a collection of tax increases, cuts in services for the elderly and heavy new burdens for deficit-ridden states.

Despite the criticism, indications were growing that Democrats would prevail on an initial Senate showdown set for Saturday night, and Majority Leader Harry Reid, the top Democrat, crisply rebutted the Republican charges. He said the bill “will save lives, save money and save Medicare,” the main health program for the elderly.

The legislation is designed to answer President Barack Obama’s demand to expand coverage, end insurance industry practices such as denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions, and restrain the growth of health care spending.

Still, Republicans saw little to like Reid’s legislation awaiting the Saturday night Senate vote.

“It makes no sense at all and affronts common sense,” said Sen. Judd Gregg, one of several Republicans to criticize the measure. He added that a plan to expand Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor, was a “bait and switch” with states as the victims.

Republican governors, meeting in Texas, agreed. “We all know a sucker play when we see one,” said Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana. The bill would expand the Medicaid program, which provides health care for the poor, and leave the states with part of the additional cost beginning after three years. Medicaid is administered by the states.

In the Capitol, Reid answered Republican delaying tactics with an initial vote set for Saturday evening to determine whether he has the 60 votes needed to move the legislation forward. That so-called “supermajority” in the 100-member Senate is required to advance the bill toward full debate, expected to begin after Thanksgiving.

For the rest of the article please go here:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/20/republicans-blast-bait-switch-health/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+foxnews%252Fpolitics+%2528FOXNews.com+-+Politics%2529

Face Forward Comments:

The health care bill vote is coming.   There are so many back door deals being cut it hard to keep track.  You can bet as each person that once opposed the bill now comes out in favor or you find out they have voted yes on it, they were bought and paid for. 

When Pelosi was pushing her version through the House, Rep. Dan Maffei (D-N.Y.) was among a group of lawmakers that got a package included in the bill to reduce a 2.5 percent tax on medical device manufacturers in his state. And remember the famous Blue Dog Democrats that were supposed to be so conservative?  Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) was loud in his vocal opposition however,  Democratic leaders knew how to lock in his vote. They’d add a last-minute provision authorizing up to $500 million to create medical centers that could benefit a college in Cardoza’s California district. Dig deep enough and every person in the House that voted yes got something.

Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao (R) of Louisiana must not have gotten the message from House Republicans that no one in the GOP caucus – repeat no one – would vote with Democrats on a sweeping overhaul of the US healthcare system.

The first Vietnamese-American elected to the US Congress, Cao last year defeated incumbent Rep. William Jefferson, after the eight-term Democrat was indicted for bribery

In a vote late Saturday night, Representative Cao – a vulnerable freshman in a Democratic district still devastated by hurricane Katrina – broke ranks, casting the lone Republican vote for the legislation.

“I have always said that I would put aside partisan wrangling to do the business of the people. My vote tonight was based on my priority of doing what is best for my constituents,” he said in a statement after the vote.

In Cao’s district, 3 out of 4 voters chose Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential elections. In 2004, President Bush won only 24 percent of the vote here.

For the rest of this story:

http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/11/08/joseph-cao-the-lone-republican-who-voted-for-healthcare-bill/

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Democratic-controlled House has narrowly passed landmark health care reform legislation, handing President Barack Obama a hard won victory on his signature domestic priority.

Republicans were nearly unanimous in opposing the plan that would expand coverage to tens of millions of Americans who lack it and place tough new restrictions on the insurance industry.

The 220-215 vote late Saturday cleared the way for the Senate to begin a long-delayed debate on the issue that has come to overshadow all others in Congress.

A triumphant Speaker Nancy Pelosi compared the legislation to the passage of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare 30 years later.

Obama, who went to Capitol Hill earlier on Saturday to lobby wavering Democrats, said in a statement after the vote, “I look forward to signing it into law by the end of the year.”

“It provides coverage for 96 percent of Americans. It offers everyone, regardless of health or income, the peace of mind that comes from knowing they will have access to affordable health care when they need it,” said Rep. John Dingell, the 83-year-old Michigan lawmaker who has introduced national health insurance in every Congress since succeeding his father in 1955.

But minority Republicans cataloged their objections across hours of debate on the 1,990-page, $1.2 trillion legislation.

For the rest of this story:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091108/D9BREBKG1.html

WASHINGTON, Nov 8 (Reuters) – After a landmark win in the U.S. House of Representatives, President Barack Obama’s push for healthcare reform faces a difficult path in the Senate amid divisions in his own Democratic Party on how to proceed.

On a 220-215 vote, including the support of one Republican and opposition from 39 Democrats, the House backed a bill late on Saturday that would expand coverage to nearly all Americans and bar insurance practices such as refusing to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.

The battle now shifts to the Senate, where work on Obama’s top domestic priority has been stalled for weeks as Democratic leader Harry Reid searches for an approach that can win the 60 votes he needs to overcome Republican procedural hurdles.

“Take this baton and bring this effort to the finish line,” Obama urged senators on Sunday in an appearance at the White House, saying passage of healthcare reform would represent “their finest moment in public service.”

Democrats have no margin for error — they control exactly 60 seats in the 100-member Senate. Some moderate Democrats have rebelled at Reid’s plan to include a new government-run insurance program, known as the “public option,” in the bill.

Senator Joe Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, renewed his promise on Sunday to help Republicans block a final vote if the bill contains the government-run insurance option backed by Senate liberals

For the rest of this story:

http://www.reuters.com/article/sarahPalin/idUSN0823070020091108

By JOHN FUND

“It’s one thing to be serene under fire, it’s another to be delusional.”

More than a few Democrats in Congress are perplexed and worried that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is insisting on ramming through a 1,900-page health care bill on Saturday, just days after her party took heavy losses in Tuesday’s elections. “It reminds me of Major Nicholson, the obsessed British major in the film ‘Bridge on the River Kwai,’” one Democrat told me. “She is fixated on finishing her health care bridge even as she’s lost sight of where it’s going and what damage it could cause to her own troops.”

Indeed, the Speaker’s take on Tuesday’s off-year elections struck some of her own members as delusive “happy talk.” “From our perspective, we won last night,” a cheerful Ms. Pelosi told reporters, citing her party’s pick-up of a single House seat in a New York special election and retention of another strongly Democratic seat in California.

That’s not how many of her own troops see it. Democratic Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama told Politico.com that members are “very, very sensitive” to the fact that the agenda being pushed by party leaders has “the potential to cost some of our front-line members their seats”

On health care, added New Jersey Democrat Bill Pascrell: “People who had weak knees before are going to have weaker knees now.”

Ms. Pelosi, however, apparently thinks the moment is ripe to use sheer political muscle to pass legislation reordering one sixth of the economy, with zero Republican support. The right mixture of “incentives” and Rahm Emanuel-style pressure, she believes, will bring enough Democrats to heel to vote for the bill.

The obsession Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have with passing health care strikes some Democratic moderates as a completely misplaced priority. Polls show that fewer than a fifth of Americans rank health care reform as the most important issue. Their biggest concern right now is jobs. Only 29% of voters in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll believe the economy “has hit the bottom.”

That the bill would be a job killer isn’t the only concern. Democrats worry about a backlash from the one-fourth of seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage — a program that faces steep cuts in both the likely Senate and House bills.

For the rest of this story please go to:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704013004574517603592213342.html

WASHINGTON – The Democrats’ control of a hefty majority in the Senate — plus the House — would suggest that President Barack Obama is within reach of overhauling the nation’s health care system this fall.

But the numbers mask a more complicated reality: Obama and Democratic leaders have modest leverage over several pivotal Senate Democrats who are more concerned about their next election or feel they have little to lose by opposing their party’s hierarchy.

One is still smarting from being forced to abandon next year’s election. Another had to leave the Democratic Party to stay in office. And some are from states that Obama lost badly last year.

These factors will limit the president’s ability to play his strongest card — an appeal for party loyalty and Democratic achievement — in trying to muster the 60 votes his allies will need this fall to overcome a Republican filibuster in the 100-member Senate.

When lawmakers face a tough vote, their uppermost thought is “survival,” said Alan Simpson, a Wyoming Republican who spent three terms in the Senate.

On a very few occasions, Simpson said, then-President George H.W. Bush asked him to cast a vote likely to cause him political problems back home. That was perhaps three times in 18 years, said Simpson, who held a GOP leadership post. “I swallowed hard and went over the cliff,” he said.

But it’s a sacrifice that presidents and party leaders should not count on, he said.

The Democratic leaders’ limited leverage will complicate the push for allowing the government to sell insurance in competition with private companies. Some Senate Democrats who oppose the idea are from states that voted heavily against Obama last fall.

Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln faces a potentially tough re-election race next year in Arkansas, where Obama lost to Republican John McCain by 20 percentage points. She says she will base her health care votes on what is best for Arkansans.

Choice and competition among insurers are good, Lincoln said, but “I’ve ruled out a government-funded and a government-operated plan.”

Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, where Obama lost by a similar margin, said she might be willing to let some states try “fallback or trigger” mechanisms that would create a public option if residents don’t have enough insurance choices.

But she told reporters, “I’m not for a government-run, national, taxpayer-subsidized plan, and never will be.”

For the rest of the article please go here:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/22/key-senators-rebuff-obama-health-care/?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a16:g2:r4:c0.044667:b28460495:z0

Face Fwd Comments:

The Tea Parties and the people who were vocal and the town halls can take credit for this.  Those people who have taken and continue to take time out to represent the rest of us need to be thanked.  They have driven the message home to (at least some) of the spending programs Democrats and turncoat financially irresponsible Republicans that we no longer will just turn our heads and allow you to run us into an unrecoverable debt, without a fight.

It makes me sick to think how much money this nation has given the Obama Administration to spend any way that they please.  When you read statements like, “U.S. President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus measure has saved or created at least 250,000 jobs in education, an administration official said Monday”, you have to wonder the validity of that since education is a state and local matter, isn’t it?  Unless the administration is seeking more ways to influence the education system.  You don’t think they would do that……nah.  Just more conspiracy crap from the right wing tea jerks.  yeah, right!

Our voices cannot be silenced.  We must continue the drive to pressure our lawmakers to stop spending money they don’t have and start living within their means.  I would support a moratorium on any new spending for one year, other than national security.  No raises, no grants, no pork of any kind and re deposit all funds that are left over from the Stimulus Package and TARP funds.  We could use that money to repay on the National Debt or start buying back our dollar to drive it’s worth back up.  Once we have completed that, then we would get every crook and big spender (Republican, Democrat or Independent) out of government and start rebuilding.   Hey I can dream can’t I :=).