2000 Page Healthcare Bill

I like this guy. Every time I hear of what he's doing, I am relieved that someone is still thinking out there.
 
OK - he can force a reading before anything else. Brava!

Now, can he force everyone to stick around while it's being read? I know a filibuster requires a mere quorum call (something like 30/100 or somewhere around there,) but this is a definite case where everyone should be around, listening, and not a damned thing else gets done until this whole wretched bill is read.

Just a thought...
 
I think Harry Reid should have ot read it - not a clerk. All of it. Himself. 3 times. No breaks.

Then we'll see how strong his convictions are....
 
http://www.congress.org/news/2009/11/19/reading_the_senate_bill_out_loud

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) said earlier this week he would force Congress to read the 2,074-page version of the Senate health care bill out loud.
"The American people are going to get to hear this bill read, period," Coburn said Monday.
The move is a procedural tactic designed to delay a vote on the bill, but it's also a public-relations move designed to highlight its length and perceived inscrutability.
On Thursday afternoon, Coburn backed away from the threat, saying he was not sure it would be productive.
Below, answers to a few common questions about reading the bill out loud.
How can a member of the minority force a reading?
Senate rules are very specific about bill readings, requiring two readings before the bill is sent to committee and one reading after the bill is reported out of committee.
Since legislation has grown increasingly long and complicated in modern times, reading of the bills is now routinely waived. But under current Senate rules, it takes unanimous consent to skip a reading. Any one Senator can still insist that a bill pending before the full Senate be read in its entirety.
Who actually reads the bill out loud?
The Senate clerks would be responsible for reading the bill.
However, there have been instances where others reading the bill. Earlier this year, Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee temporarily hired a speed-reader as a clerk, just in case the GOP tried to pull a similar maneuver with a 900-page climate bill.
The speed-reader wasn't necessary, as the GOP committee members later agreed to forgo reading.
How long will it take?
No one really knows for sure, but Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) estimated about 48 hours.
Can the maneuver be stopped?

If Coburn insists on using parliamentary tactics to force a reading, at least one GOP member will need to stay on the floor constantly (even overnight) to maintain his objection to waiving the reading. Otherwise, Democrats will simply ask for unanimous consent and the Senate will proceed with debate.
Why don't Members read all bills out loud?
In practice, the knotty legal language of most bills makes them pretty hard to understand without knowing the related laws. Senators and Representatives have paid staffers who help analyze and summarize legislation and make recommendations.
Still, some object to the practice of routinely waiving reading. The nonprofit Downsize D.C., dedicated to shrinking government, has drafted a proposed law called the Read the Bills Act .
The act would require all bills to be read aloud, in the presence of a quorum. If a bill was changed at the last minute, it would need to be re-read in its entirety. It would also make all members planning to vote "yes" on a bill sign an affidavit swearing that they have read it in its entirety.
What will it sound like?
If you can't wait to catch the reading on C-SPAN, you can check the new Web site Hear The Bill , which used a small army of voice actors and volunteers to read the House bill out loud.


Apparently this Senator caved to pressure and will not call for the proposed bill to be read outloud in it's entirety before voting.

It’s obvious to me that voting Americans are more concerned about what’s contained in this bill than the majority of those who have the power to make it law…..this is a travesty!

So requiring the Senators to actually know what is in the bill is considered “pulling something”, as in, doing something wrong? It’s BS that these bills are written in a manner that that they cannot be clearly understood and require the hiring of legal aides or consultants, paid for with our tax dollars to explain the contents of the bill to those we have elected.

I have to agree that hiring someone to speed read the bill just to say it was done is a waste of tax dollars, however………..why is there not the venue for We the People to view this bill in its interpreted form so that all may clearly understand the content?



 
Adding Tom Coburn to the "Needs to be removed" list next November.
 
I hope you're kidding....he's one of the few that need to be kept.

If the Dems want to play this dumbass "Healthcare Reform" game, the GOP can play right back....

The point he's trying to make is pretty clear - this bill is full of 99.97% BS....by making the bill so huge, they know that no one will take the time to read it - so they can manipulate and hide all sorts of junk in it to benefit their "master plan".
 
The bill contains the word "tax" 511 times and includes 18 tax hikes, according to Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative lobby group. It uses the word "require" more than 1,000 times, the word "shall" more than 3,500 times, and talks about studies required by the bill 150 times.

Poll Qeustion:
"President Obama has pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our federal budget deficit over the next decade. Do you think that President Obama will be able to keep his promise or do you think that any health care plan that Congress passes and President Obama signs will add to the federal budget deficit?"


Answer: Less than one-fifth of the voters -- 19 percent of the sample -- think he will keep his word. Nine of 10 Republicans and eight of 10 independents said that whatever passes will add to the torrent of red ink.

By a margin of four to three, even Democrats agreed this is likely.
That fear contributed directly to the fact that, by a 16-point margin, the majority in this poll said they oppose the legislation moving through Congress.

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseID=1398


"Move over, Bernie Madoff. Tip your hat to a trillion-dollar scam," said Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., likening the bill's supporters to the imprisoned investor who fleeced millions.


Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., said Reid had delayed implementation of many of the bill's key provisions and made it look less costly as a result. He put the true price tag at $2.5 trillion over a decade once implemented.

"Senators who support this bill have a lot of explaining to do," said the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

"Americans know that a vote to proceed on this bill is a vote for higher premiums, higher taxes and massive cuts to Medicare. That's a pretty hard thing to justify supporting."
 
Completely unacceptable, the SOB that introduces the bill should have to stand there and read it to the president in front of a camera on C-SPAN before the bill goes anywhere.

What is happening to my country? Apparently at least half of it wishes it to become the soviet union. Everyone gets a job, everyone gets taken care of, no one steps out of line.

Every time I send a letter to my senator i get a dutifully crafted mass e-mail response on how they're proceeding as diligently as possible with exactly what I urge them not to.

It seems that these people will not listen, do not want to listen, don't even care to listen. Must blood be spilled on this soil again to prevent us from becoming what we fought so hard against for 60 years? I certainly hope not, but the longer these fools continue on their headlong sprint toward a socially "just" society the more likely an armed revolt becomes.
 
Burbon, the frustration of helplessness and being ignored by your Sentators and Reps is solved very simply, by firing them. The state of our country is by in large, a byproduct of career politicians with Marxist, Progressive, Socialist agendas and beliefs. Our Founding Fathers warned us of complacently trusting our elected officials to do whats best for us.

Americans need to wake up and not just bitch at their TV and online and speak directly to their elected officials. I've done this myself and will continue to do so. If all the people who complain about the path our country has been headed down for years would actually VOTE, then the corrupt in power would be removed.

We need to take responsibility for allowing the corrupt officials to retain their jobs in Washington by re-electing them.

I believe there is a ground swell in the American population that is only gaining momentum and voter participation in 2010 will make the record books. We need to be part of this movement to educate and motivate our fellow Americans to stand together to take back our Country from the goverment. They are there to serve We the People and they've forgotten that.......it's time for a wakeup call, and a smackdown.

Here a few tidbits from Rassmussen.......
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub...2009/57_would_like_to_replace_entire_congress

Fifty-nine percent (59%) now believe that members of Congress are overpaid. That’s up 10 percentage points from last October. Just five percent (5%) think their Congress member is paid too little. Thirty percent (30%) think the pay is about right.

One reason for this attitude may be that most voters say they understand the health care legislation better than Congress. Just 22% think the legislature has a good understanding of the issue. Three-out-of-four (74%) trust their own economic judgment more than Congress’.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans believe that when members of Congress meet with regulators and other government officials, they do so to help their friends and hurt their political opponents. Most believe that’s why politicians are able to solicit contributions from business leaders.

Most, however, say it’s generally a good investment because political donors get more than their money’s worth. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of American adults say political donors get more than their money back in terms of favors from members of Congress.

Despite these reviews, more than 90% of Congress routinely gets reelected every two years. It’s a shock when any incumbent loses. One explanation for this phenomenon frequently heard in Washington, D.C. is that “people hate Congress but love their own congressman.”

Voters have a different perspective, and 50% say 'rigged' election rules explain high reelection rate for Congress.

When the Constitution was written, the nation’s founders expected that there would be a 50% turnover in the House of Representatives every election cycle. That was the experience they witnessed in state legislatures at the time (and most of the state legislatures offered just one-year terms).

For well over 100 years after the Constitution was adopted, the turnover averaged in the 50% range as expected.

In the 20th century, turnover began to decline. As power and prestige flowed to Washington during the New Deal era, fewer and fewer members of Congress wanted to leave. In 1968, congressional turnover fell to single digits for the first time ever, and it has remained very low ever since.


Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who added that Republicans are likely to attempt to filibuster each amendment, meaning Reid would have hold together his 60 votes time and again.

"The battle has just begun," McConnell added. "The American people are asking us to stop this bill, and we are going to do anything and everything we can to prevent this measure from becoming law."
 
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goodburbon said:
...Everyone gets a job, everyone gets taken care of....
Click to expand...

Well, everyone gets taken care of, but they don't want to have to work for it - they think they are entitled to it, for free.....that's the problem today in the USSA.
 
I do vote, it never seems to do any good. Any newcomer to washington quickly learns how to operate within the system. The system as it operates now is the problem. Any fresh ideas we elect quickly become lost to the status quo in washington. Expand benefits, expand control, expand boundaries of acceptable control. Push the envelope and pull back just a tiny bit so it doesn't seem as bad as the extreme.

It's like gas prices, inflate to $4 a gallon steadily and then decrease to $3. $3 doesn't seem so bad now does it? It was $1.50 before this mess started. The government is using the same tactic to have us forget about other things, like rights infringement. How easily do some of you accept that "The right to keep and bear arms that the government deems safe in a manner in which the government deems acceptable shall not be infringed unless the government changes it's mind and decides to change the rules." How is one of the 10 things spelled out specifically by our forefathers as government having no power over even an issue?

Something needs to be done about healthcare, yes. That something is not a government takeover. NOTHING the government has taken over EVER prospers for long, because it loses the ability to adapt. I know we need something done, my wife is pregnant and won't be covered by insurance. Pregnancy is apparently a special case and requires a special policy, required to be purchased at least a year in advance of the beginning of pregnancy whose total premiums total double the benefits. Or we could pay for insurance from my employer which is $600 a month, and I'm earning $0 a month right now, so that doesn't really work.

I'm not an extremist, and If I feel this way I can imagine that the extremists are ready to march on washington.
 
goodburbon said:
I do vote, it never seems to do any good. Any newcomer to washington quickly learns how to operate within the system. The system as it operates now is the problem. Any fresh ideas we elect quickly become lost to the status quo in washington. Expand benefits, expand control, expand boundaries of acceptable control. Push the envelope and pull back just a tiny bit so it doesn't seem as bad as the extreme.

It's like gas prices, inflate to $4 a gallon steadily and then decrease to $3. $3 doesn't seem so bad now does it? It was $1.50 before this mess started. The government is using the same tactic to have us forget about other things, like rights infringement. How easily do some of you accept that "The right to keep and bear arms that the government deems safe in a manner in which the government deems acceptable shall not be infringed unless the government changes it's mind and decides to change the rules." How is one of the 10 things spelled out specifically by our forefathers as government having no power over even an issue?

Something needs to be done about healthcare, yes. That something is not a government takeover. NOTHING the government has taken over EVER prospers for long, because it loses the ability to adapt. I know we need something done, my wife is pregnant and won't be covered by insurance. Pregnancy is apparently a special case and requires a special policy, required to be purchased at least a year in advance of the beginning of pregnancy whose total premiums total double the benefits. Or we could pay for insurance from my employer which is $600 a month, and I'm earning $0 a month right now, so that doesn't really work.

I'm not an extremist, and If I feel this way I can imagine that the extremists are ready to march on washington.
Click to expand...

I already did, two weeks ago. Reminds me, heard the local sporting goods store has CCI primers back in stock, heading out now..
 
“The key elements of this health care reform bill, I repeat: reduces short-and-long term debt, expands coverage, promotes choice and competition, reforms the insurance market, improves quality of care,” Reid said.​
Let's look at these one at a time:

reduces short-and-long term debt, expands coverage

This bill will cause the debt to EXPLODE. Even setting aside the fact that entitlement programs always end up costing far more in the real world than they do on paper, this bill is full of accounting gimmicks. They start collecting taxes now and not providing services for 4 years, because the CBO is only allowed to score a 10 year period. They have more than 200 billion in doctor payments they're leaving out of the bill. There are huge Medicare cuts in the bill that may or may not ever come to pass. This is going to be staggeringly expensive and everyone, Democrat or Republican, who is following it knows that. In fact, if someone denies it, it's a good bet that he either thinks you're ignorant or have no qualms about lying to you.

expands coverage

That's true. More people will be covered under the bill. Of course, it's worth noting that we could cover all those same people at a fraction of the cost and without having to rewrite the health care system for everyone else in the country if Congress was inclined to do it.

promotes choice and competition

This is horsecrap. When liberals talk to each other, they admit that the public option is all about destroying the insurance industry and converting over to a single payer system. But, when they talk to the general public, they deny that's what they're doing. It's rather bizarre -- but in any case, having the government providing your insurance instead of competing insurance companies, which is the end game of all this, does not promote choice and competition.

reforms the insurance market

In the short term, it will reform the insurance market. In the long-term, it will destroy it utterly. So, it is reform, in the sense that pouring sugar into your gas tank will "reform" your car.

improves quality of care

Really? Death panels, rationing, less doctors for more patients, the government denying people needed treatments to save money -- these things will improve care? This bill will destroy the quality of care in this country -- but, the government will be in charge while it happens -- and that's what people like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama really care about.
 
http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/09...t-of-obamacare-and-his-pattern-of-corruption/

Are all of Obama's team criminals and thugs? It's more than a random coincidence.

It's almost like you need some Socialist, criminal street cred to get on his team.........and this is the main author of Obamacare. :scared:

They are knowingly and admittedly using healthcare....the lives of the American people, as a political tool to gain more power and control........it's immoral and unconstitutional .

http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/08...d-out-health-care-reform-plan-in-2008-speech/
 
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Chicago-style politics are thriving in Washington--Vote for Healthcare or we punish your State? :shocked:

This is extortion, no matter how you slice it. I would also submit that this could be labeled as an act of treason. Threatening to compromise the National Defense of our Country for political favor and gain?
Source: Dems Threaten Nelson In Pursuit of 60

While the Democrats appease Senator Lieberman, they still have to worry about other recalcitrant Democrats including Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson. Though Lieberman has been out front in the fight against the public option and the Medicare buy-in, Nelson was critical of both. Now that those provisions appear to have been stripped from the bill, Lieberman may get on board, but Nelson's demand that taxpayer money not be used to fund abortion has still not been met. According to a Senate aide, the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base on the BRAC list if Nelson doesn't fall into line.
Offutt Air Force Base employs some 10,000 military and federal employees in Southeastern Nebraska. As our source put it, this is a "naked effort by Rahm Emanuel and the White House to extort Nelson's vote." They are "threatening to close a base vital to national security for what?" asked the Senate staffer.
Indeed, Offutt is the headquarters for US Strategic Command, the successor to Strategic Air Command, and not by accident. STRATCOM was located in the middle of the country for strategic reasons. Its closure would be a massive blow to the economy of the state of Nebraska, but it would also be another example of this administration playing politics with our national security.
 
Reid's Healthcare Shell Game continues......We'll all be stuck with funding Abortions under his plan.
***********************************************************



This statement represents NRLC's initial assessment of changes made in the 2,074-page Reid bill by the 383-page manager's amendment. NRLC will issue more detailed analysis later that will speak to other objectionable elements of the revised Reid legislation, pertaining to other policy issues of concern to NRLC. Regarding the abortion language, however, we can already say that the Reid language is completely unacceptable for reasons that include the following:
  • The language violates the principles of the Hyde Amendment by requiring the federal government to pay premiums for private health plans that will cover any or all abortions. The federal subsidies would be subject to a convoluted bookkeeping requirement, different in detail but similar in kind to the Capps-Waxman accounting scheme that the House of Representatives rejected when it adopted the Stupak-Pitts Amendment on November 7. The Reid manager's amendment requires that all enrollees in an abortion-covering plan make a separate payment into an account that will pay for abortions, but the amendment also contains language [Section 1303 (b)(3)(A) and (b)(3)(B)] that is apparently intended to prevent or discourage any insurer from explaining what this surcharge is to be used for. Moreover, there is nothing in the language to suggest that payment of the abortion charge is optional for any enrollee.
  • The so-called "firewall" between federal funds and private funds is merely a bookkeeping gimmick, inconsistent with the long-established principles that govern existing federal health programs, such as the Hyde Amendment. Moreover, the Reid "firewall" is made of rice paper – it exists only so long as the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services continues to contain the Hyde Amendment.
  • At any future date when the congressional appropriators and/or the President decide to block renewal of the Hyde Amendment, the Reid bookkeeping requirements would automatically evaporate, and insurers could pay for elective abortions with the federal subsidies without even bookkeeping requirements. This is in stark contrast with the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which would permanently prohibit the federal subsidies from paying any part of the premium of a plan that covers elective abortions (while explicitly affirming that insurers may sell, and persons may buy, through the Exchanges, plans that cover any or all abortions, as long as federal subsidies are not used to purchase such plans).
  • In place of the original "public option" provisions in the Reid bill, the Reid manager's amendment establishes a new program under which the federal government (the Office of Personnel Management, OPM) would administer a program of "multi-state" health plans offered by private insurers. The amendment says (on page 56) that the OPM director "shall ensure that . . . there is at least one such plan that does not provide coverage of" abortions beyond the types of abortions that are funded under the federal Medicaid program in any given year, which is described as "assured availability of varied coverage." This seems to envision a system under which the OPM director would administer multi-state plans that cover elective abortions, and perhaps even possess authority to require such plans to cover elective abortions, as long as the diector also ensured that there was one plan that did not cover abortions (except types of abortions also funded by the federal Medicaid program). This would be a sharp break from the policy that has long governed the Federal Employees Health Benefits program, which is also a program administered by OPM, under which private plans are completely prohibited from covering elective abortions if they wish to participate in the program.
  • The Reid manager's amendment contains a new section [Section 1303(a)(1)] providing that a state "may elect to prohibit abortion coverage in qualified health plans offered through an Exchange in such State if such State enacts a law to provide for such prohibition." The original Reid bill already contained a clause preventing pre-emption of state laws relating to insurance coverage of abortion [see Section 1303 (b)(1)]. The new opt-out clause [Section 1303 (a)], in contrast, is defective in several important respects. First, it apparently would apply only to laws enacted in the future. Other new language in the manager's amendment [Section 1303 (b) (1)(A)(ii)] might be construed to conflict with some existing state laws. Moreover, it is unclear how the state opt-out clause would be interpreted in light of other provisions in the bill, including the authority granted to the director of the Office of Personnel Management to set rules for the new federal program of multi-state plans.
  • The House-passed health bill contains language to prevent federal Executive Branch officials from requiring private health plans to cover abortions. However, the Senate on December 3 adopted an amendment (the Mikulski Amendment) that could be employed by the HHS to require all private health plans to cover all abortions, simply by defining them as "preventive care," as Senator Ben Nelson pointed out in his December 3 floor statement explaining his vote against the Mikulski Amendment. The Reid manager's amendment prevents the Secretary of Health and Human Services from defining elective abortion as an "essential benefit," but it does not remove the entirely separate authority granted by the Mikulski Amendment to mandate that all plans cover abortion by defining abortion as a "preventive" service. As NRLC noted in our November 30 letter to the Senate opposing the Mikulski Amendment, a number of pro-abortion authorities have already begun to classify abortion as a "preventive" service.
  • The manager's amendment inserts into the bill, by reference, the entire text of the Indian Health reauthorization bill (S. 1790). This language is objectionable because it does not contain an amendment (the Vitter Amendment) that was adopted by the Senate on February 26, 2008, by a vote of 52-42, during consideration of Indian health reauthorization legislation. The Vitter Amendment would permanently prohibit coverage of elective abortions in federally funded Indian health programs. That roll call was the last time that Indian health reauthorization legislation was on the Senate floor.
  • The "conscience" protection for health care providers (sometimes referred to as "the Weldon language"), which was included in the House-passed health bill (H.R. 3962, Section 259), is not included in the Reid manager's amendment.
 
The trail of corruption continues........Brides for Votes is alive in well in Washington.

Sen Lindsey Graham
"This is far from over. The House and Senate bills are in many ways irreconcilable,” Graham, a Republican who voted against the bill said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sunday morning. “ … You know, change you can believe in, after this health care bill debacle is now becoming an empty slogan. And it's really been replaced by seedy Chicago politics, when you think about it, backroom deals that amount to bribes.”

Graham is upset over what he calls Enron-accounting tactics that were used to make the bill look solvent.

“It is a sham. You collect taxes for 10 years and you pay out benefits for six years, and the Class Act, which no one's talking about, is a completely new government entitlement.”

Seedy or not, now that the Senate has passed a version of its health care bill, both houses of Congress will attempt to reconcile the differences between their bills. That process should take just as much Chicago moxie to pull off.


**********************************************
A $100 million item for construction of a university hospital was inserted in the Senate health care bill at the request of Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who faces a difficult re-election campaign, his office said Sunday night.

The legislation leaves it up to the Health and Human Services Department to decide where the money should be spent, although spokesman Bryan DeAngelis said Dodd hopes to claim it for the University of Connecticut.

The provision is included in a 383-page series of changes to the health care bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., outlined Saturday. Scattered throughout are numerous items sought by individual lawmakers, many of them directing money explicitly to programs or projects in their home states.
 
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