The Audacity of Hype

The hyperbole of both sides of the aisle is off the scale, but I'm continuously amazed at the back-and-forth of Obama, Reid and Pelosi on the health care bill. Obama has finally gone completely off the rails with his latest tyrades in public speeches. He's essentially daring the House to go ahead and vote on the bill. And Pelosi and Reid keep talking about all these things that are, or will be, different in the bill....as if the current bill is mutable! The bill that currently sits on the table, waiting for a vote from House, is the Senate bill. It cannot be altered at all.

Now, depending on the poll, between 60 and 70 percent of Americans do NOT want this horrid excuse for so-called “health care reform”. Sadly, I’m betting too many of you don’t really know what’s going on with this bill, and only are hearing something like “The Democrats are trying to pass a comprehensive health care reform bill and the Republicans are blocking it”. If that’s all you know about it, then shame on you. First of all, it’s a lie. The House of Representatives—of which Ciro Rodriguez is our liberal representative—narrowly passed a version of this legislation. The Senate passed a different version with JUST enough to beat any filibuster. The thing is, there is enough difference between the two bills that quite a few of the Democrats in the House do not like the Senate version.

All of the battles have been within the Democratic camp, with Republicans being stuck on the sidelines. What Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is trying desperately to do is create enough backroom deals to convince the Democrats to accept the Senate version as-is, with the HOPE that a bill to “fix” the differences would be passed later.

The process known as “reconciliation” was originally created via the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and had a very narrow budget-only use (Wikipedia has a fair description of its use and history). Both houses of Congress and both parties have stretched its application since then, even though the adopted “Byrd Rule” (submitted by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd) had established a more limiting use. Pelosi has been working feverishly to work deals to get enough Democrats to vote to accept the Senate bill and then vote on the reconciliation bill (containing the changes). This use is arguably OUTSIDE THE BOUNDS for appropriate use, and the types of items that would need to be reconciled (e.g., public funding of abortion – aka killing of the unborn) cannot be constitutionally addressed this way.

But now it gets even more dangerous. It’s called “The Slaughter Solution”. House Rules Chairman Louise Slaughter is submitting a rule that would dictate that the Senate version of the bill is “automatically passed” or “deemed to have passed” once the House passes the reconciliation bill. In other words, NO ACTUAL VOTE happens on accepting the Senate version of the bill! This is blatantly unconstitutional. The fact that President Obama and our House Representative, Ciro Rodriguez, want to push through this massive, deficit-expanding takeover of health care in spite of a growing public voice that wants reform approached using more sense (and less dollars), means they are willing to try every unethical, shady trick to make it happen, no matter the cost.

I implore you to put the pressure on your Representatives to fight against this. Most of us want health care reform. The real agenda of Progressives like Rodriguez is to socialize it. The true solution is to solve the problems of why it costs so much. Call the office of Ciro Rodriguez and put a stop to this huge mistake.