Harry Reid trying to ram health care bill down our throats by Christmas

So much for taking his time. Harry Reid now plans to have a health care bill signed, sealed and wrapped with a bow just in time for Christmas.

Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) promised President Obama on Tuesday that he will be happy to play Santa Claus and put that treasure under his tree just in time for the holiday. Reid plans to bring the Senate version of a comprehensive health care bill to the floor for debate by next week and have it signed, sealed, tied with a bow, and delivered to the President before the lights are taken down off the White House.

At a rare midnight show on Saturday, the House of Representatives passed its version of a new government-backed healthcare scheme giving President Obama hope for an early Christmas. Senator Reid took the House bill (HR 3962) and put it on the Senate calendar, thus putting on the debate roster.

When it does come up, it will be the text of the House bill that is debated, as the Senate has not finalized its own version as of Monday. Reid hopes that the costs can be kept at a respectable $900 billion as the White House originally proposed. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is tasked with doing the math and making sure there are few enough commas in the final figure to satisfy Reid and his fellow Senators.

To make sure that the Santas in the Senate know just how much he wants this particular present this year, President Obama sent a special messenger to Capitol Hill — Bill Clinton. The former President attended a luncheon with Democratic Senators on Tuesday, reminding them of the one thing on President Obama’s wish list and how they were the only hope of Christmas being truly merry. In fact, unless they got busy right away dotting the “i”s and crossing the “t”s, then there might not be anything under the tree for President Obama this year. “It’s not important to be perfect here. It’s important to act, to move, to start the ball rolling, to claim the evident advantages that all these plans agree with, and whatever they can get the votes for I’m going to support,” Clinton told reporters after the lunch. It’s not an easy thing to tell someone to hurry up and read a bill that runs nearly 2,000 pages and then to digest it, propose alterations, and then write your own version and line up supporters and get it up for a vote and get it passed — all by New Year’s.

If they don’t have sixty votes in order to pass the bill, not to worry. Michelle Malkin reminds us that they’re more than willing to go nuclear.

Speaking of which…the White House is still leaving the door open to abusing the budget reconciliation process to ram the government health care takeover through.

They don’t care that Americans hate the idea of government run health care, and don’t think they don’t know we hate it. Politico’s piece about all the deal making (I especially like the part where our tax dollars are used to buy votes to destroy our health care) that went on in the House proves they know full well most Americans want no part of PelosiCare/ObamaCare/HarryCare.

Before they went to the floor, Democratic leaders had lined up 219 votes — a bare majority plus one, so that no lawmaker could be accused in a campaign commercial of casting the deciding vote.

If the bill is so great, why would they worry about commercials pointing out who cast the deciding vote? If it’s so great they should be loud and proud of their vote to take over 1/6 of the American economy. But then again, if it was as wonderful as they want us to think it is, they wouldn’t have voted down 11 amendments requiring them to enroll in the plan they’re creating.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 4:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.