The left is upset that the major news media is reporting that the “Slaughter Rule” may have some constitutional problems.  Lefties are apoplectic that somebody would dare to argue that the House has to actually vote on the Senate passed ObamaCare bill before it is sent to the President and signed into law.  Article 1, Section 7, states that “Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States.”

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Lefties (Daily Kos, TPMDC, and Huffington Post) are defending against allegations that the “Slaughter Rule” proposed strategy to pass ObamaCare without a vote is unprecedented and unconstitutional.  The Slaughter Rule has the support of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and is the Democrats preferred strategy to pass ObamaCare.  Liberals are peddling a talking point that self-executing rules like the Slaughter Rule have been done before and it was the Republicans that used this tool in the past.

The fact of the matter is that there is no precedent for the House to pass a bill without a direct vote by using a budget reconciliation measure as a trigger and a means to pass ObamaCare.  Nancy Pelosi’s potentially unconstitutional strategy to pass unconstitutional ObamaCare is without precedent nor justification.

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On FOX News Sunday, Assistant to the Speaker of the House Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) followed his own advise contained in a memo leaked to Politico that advises silence on unconstitutional ObamaCare procedure.  The Constitution clearly states that bills have to be voted upon in the House before being presented to the President.  Leaders in the House are considering a complicated procedure to pass ObamaCare in the House without a vote and in violation of Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution.

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House leaders have scheduled a vote for next Friday or Saturday according to Politico on ObamaCare.  Reports indicate that House leaders are planning to pass ObamaCare without a vote.  Assistant to the Speaker Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) advised Democrats not to talk about the procedure to pass the bill.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has come up with a very complicated procedure to get ObamaCare to the President’s desk without House members having to vote directly on the bill.  So much for the Constitution that says that a bill does not become a law until the House and Senate pass identical bills, and then the President signs that legislation.

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has scheduled a vote next week on a House rule to get ObamaCare passed without one Representative having to vote on the bill.  This may be unconstitutional.  I have to be careful not to say that “Pelosi will schedule a vote on ObamaCare,”  because the plan right now is to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare without a vote in the House.  The procedure is purposefully confusing because liberals in Congress hope the American people don’t figure out this procedural fraud until it is too late.  So much for the Constitution that says that a bill does not become a law until the House and Senate pass identical bills, and then the President signs that legislation.  

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Behind closed doors, the Obama Administration, House and Senate Democrat leaders are cutting a secret deal on ObamaCare.  They have come up with a way to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare in the House without any House members having to vote directly on the bill.  Now The Hill is reporting that the House and Senate Parliamentarians are helping to advise Democrats on how to pass ObamaCare.  When will the self proclaimed most ethical Congress in history start acting ethical and honest?  This 111th Congress has proven, to date, to be the most secretive, non-transparent and devious Congress in recent history.

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Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY) gave us a glimpse into the inner workings of the House Democrat Caucus.  Massa voted against ObamaCare when it came up in the House last year.  He alleged on a New York radio station that he is being forced out of Congress because of his stance on ObamaCare.  Aside from the validity of the allegations against him, Massa gives us a glimpse into a fight within the Democrat Caucus on the political viability of the President’s health care reform proposal.  Massa shows us that there are some Democrats pleading with Speaker Pelosi (D-Ca) to back away from ObamaCare. 

According to Politico:

Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) says the House ethics committee is investigating him for inappropriate comments he made to a male staffer on New Year’s Eve — and that he’s the victim of a power play by Democratic leaders who want him out of Congress because he’s a “no” vote on health care reform.

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The abortion issue may take down ObamaCare, even if Congress pulls the Health Care Nuclear Option in a desperate attempt to pass the bill.  Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI) declared yesterday that “several Democrats who voted for it the House would oppose it next time around” without removing pro-abortion language in the Senate passed ObamaCare bill.  This is a big problem for the proponents of ObamaCare, because under the special rules of the reconciliation process, ObamaCare can’t be fixed. 

Even if the Democrats attempted to insert a ban on the federal funding of abortion in the reconciliation measure, that would cause both procedural and vote counting problems in the Senate.  For all the talk yesterday from the President about this being the time to vote on ObamaCare, an unresolved abortion controversy makes prospects for passage doubtful.

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President Obama is advocating the use of the budget reconciliation process to pass ObamaCare through the House and Senate.  This procedure also referred to as the ObamaCare Nuclear Option and the Health Care Nuclear Option because the liberals are using this procedure as a means to get around the filibuster in the Senate.  This same President Obama who opposed the Nuclear Option in 2005 as a back bench Senator. 

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Now that the feel good politics of the Blair House bipartisan Summit is over, the left is gearing up to lie and cheat their way to victory.  Now claim may be bold, yet it is objectively true.  The left is lying about the American people’s opinions on ObamaCare and they are cheating to get the bill passed.  The next few weeks will determine whether the American people get ObamaCare passed against their will with no opportunity for a minority number of Members of Congress to protect the will of a majority of Americans.

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Jonathan Chait at The New Republic, ObamaCare Kool-Aid sipper, writes in “The Coming Conservative Health Care Freakout” that he is excited to see conservatives “freakout” when they realize that ObamaCare is not dead yet.  He may be correct that conservatives were surprised to see that ObamaCare was back from the dead.  I was shocked to see that the Obama Administration was intent on shrinking the Democrat Caucus by pushing this unpopular measure.  This Chait Op Ed is conclusive evidence that these lefties live in another universe. 

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ObamaCare is not popular.  The people don’t want it.  The people have rejected it.  Yet President Barack Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) are going to ram it down the throats of the American people using a special Congressional procedure that avoids a filibuster in the Senate - The Health Care Nuclear Option.  The Obama Administration and Leaders in Congress have shown contempt for the opinions and views of the American people.  They just don’t get it and they don’t care what people think about this plan. 

Townhalls, Tea Parties, 9-12 demonstrations, ObamaCare low polling numbers and the election of Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) are all products of an unpopular health care idea by President Obama.  The Declaration of Independence states, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  Consent of the governed is an important concept, yet politicians in the Federal Government seem to believe that they can pass unpopular legislation and work to get the consent of the governed at some future date.  This is not how this democracy is supposed to work.  Members of Congress are supposed to be responsive to voters and the American public.  I truly believe that many Representatives and Senators believe that the American peoples only are allowed to participate in this democracy when they vote every other November.  This ObamaCare should not pass without the consent of the American people.

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Over at NROnline’s The Corner, Daniel Foster wrote an interesting piece where he explained how Vice President Joe Biden could press the button to launch the Senate’s reconciliation Nuclear Option.  This strategy is the only way the Democrats can get ObamaCare across the finish line and to the President’s desk in the next few weeks.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s office has come up with this partisan strategy to pass a version of ObamaCare that must start in the House.  They need the help of Vice President Biden to usher the bill through the Senate’s consideration, because the plan includes the Vice President issuing rulings, as President of the Senate, that will avoid a filibuster.  Ironically, the Pelosi strategy is all happening as President Obama’s schedules a public bipartisan meeting of the House and Senate to work on a deal to find common ground on health care reform.  The President and Democrats are readying the ObamaCare Nuclear Option if the summit does not produce a deal. 

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A CBS News/New York Times Poll today indicates that it is a widely held belief that government is not responsive to the will of the people, special interests have too much influence and small government is better than a big government.  This poll shows that the Tea Party movement is merely the public face of a majority of American’s concerns.  The shocking upset win of Scott Brown in Massachusetts and this poll, point to the proposition that Democrats may be the victim of voter rage this fall if these poll numbers don’t move. 

The latest CBS News/New York Times Poll finds most Americans are now dissatisfied or even angry with government — and much of that frustration is directed at Congress, which now receives just a 15% approval rating.  Levels of distrust and cynicism about government are at or near 15-year highs.

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The latest in a long line of attacks on the filibuster comes from Paul Krugman of the New York Times.  Krugman, better known professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University and and Captain of the Obama Administration Cheerleading Squad, wrote a column arguing that the filibuster is destroying America.  Krugman argued that filibustering Republicans, not international terrorists, not a nuclear weapon seeking Iran, not North Korea, not another economic meltdown on Wall Street, and not the $12.3 trillion dollar national debt, will lead to America being lost.  This fear-mongering by Krugman is the latest attempt to convince liberals in the Senate to abolish the filibuster with a simple majority vote.  From Krugman in the NYT.

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The left is using every opportunity to fight the filibuster.  As I have argued at Red State and Big Government numerous times, the filibuster is essential for democracy.  Don’t be fooled, the left will use any excuse to message against the right of the minority to debate nominations and offer amendments to legislation.  The far left would like to establish rule without dissent and have contempt for anybody that disagrees with them.  The left seems intent on changing the rules of Congress to exterminate free speech and the exhange of ideas in the legislative branch of government when those ideas come from Republicans, moderate Democrats and nonconforming Americans. 

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Frank Luntz has created a firestorm with the release of a document “The Language of Financial Reform” where he outlines messaging points about the financial reform ideas pending before Congress.  The left is in a fury over this memo, yet the memo seems to correctly allege that the financial reform measures pending before Congress contain a permanent bailout authority and fund for the federal government.  A source in the Senate tell me that allegations of a permanent bailout fund in both the House and Senate versions of the legislation are “largely correct.”

Sam Stein of the Huffington Post writes:

In a 17-page memo titled, “The Language of Financial Reform,” Luntz urged opponents of reform to frame the final product as filled with bank bailouts, lobbyist loopholes, and additional layers of complicated government bureaucracy.

The American people, and Tea Party participants in particular, are mad about politicians bailing out Wall Street, AIG (in addition to a potential coverup of information relating to that bailout), car companies and using TARP monies as a means to set up a permanent authority for the federal government to engage in crony captitalism.  If Luntz’s allegations are true, then he should be lauded by those who believe that the last thing the federal government should do is establish a permanent authority for the federal government to bail out failing firms.  Critics of Luntz are having a hard time arguing that the legislation pending before Congress does not set up a mechanism for the federal government to bailout and sieze institutions that they deem to be threats to the economy.

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My big takeaway from President Obama’s speech yesterday is that he is walled off from reality in the White House and he has absolutely no clue what average Americans are feeling these days.  Clearly, after stunning losses in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts over the past few months, this Administration was sent a message from the American people that they are mad at President Obama’s big government policies.  He did not hear that message and he told them last night that he is pushing forward with ObamaCare and other big government ideas.  They don’t want it.

The President, when not blaming the Bush Administration for his problems, merely thinks that the American people are not listening to him.  This is good news for conservatives, because the President’s speech last night shows that he will take no action to right the ship before Congressional elections this November and he seems incapable of a nuanced approach to politics that includes a mix of conservative and liberal approaches to problem solving.  The President is like the Captain of the Titanic in April of 1912 steaming past huge icebergs in the hope that his ship of state somehow makes it until the end of the year without a catastrophic collision.

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The ink is yet to dry on Senator-elect Scott Brown’s certification to be the 41st vote against ObamaCare and the left is readying a multi-pronged attack on the filibuster.  Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) have opened up a front in both the House and the Senate to lower the threshold for Senate leadership to stifle debate and amendment.  Don’t be fooled.  These are merely first shots in an all out war by the left to exterminate the one rule in the Senate that makes it difficult for the Obama Administration to railroad though an unpopular left wing agenda.

The Hill reports:

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) in the next few weeks intends to introduce legislation that would take away the minority’s power to filibuster legislation.  Harkin has wanted to change the filibuster for years, but his move would come in the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s dramatic victory in Massachusetts. Brown’s victory cost Democrats their 60th vote in the Senate, and may have dealt a death blow to their hopes to move a massive healthcare overhaul. It could also limit President Barack Obama’s ability to move other pieces of his agenda forward.

The Harkin rules change would require 67 votes for passage.  It is unlikely that Senators in the minority party would vote for a rules change that would erode the few rights of the minority.  Especially at a time when the Obama Administration seems intent on passing ObamaCare using all means necessary to get it done.  This is merely one idea in the Senate to attack the filibuster.  There are other options that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has at his disposal to crush minority party rights in the Senate.

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