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Healthcare Reform Vote Today

The House today is casting perhaps its most important vote in a generation.  Fortunately, the “Slaughter Rule” has been discarded and the American people will clearly get to see who votes yes and who votes no on this government takeover of healthcare.

The American people have done their part by letting all in Congress know how they feel about this bill.  If the Democrats vote as their constituents want them to vote, then this bill will surely be voted down.  If the arm-twisting and bribery by the White House and Democratic Party leadership has been successful, then our country changes for the worst today.

There is but a few seconds left on the clock and the Dems are dribbling down for the last-second shot in this tie game.  Even if they miss, we will be going to overtime.  Stay tuned…

March Madness

As March Madness in the collegiate ranks begins today, the Democrats are setting up for their own last second shot on Sunday on the scheduled vote on healthcare insurance reform.  Make it and they win and we lose.  Miss it and we win, for now.  This appears to be coming down to the wire like an exciting finish to an NCAA tournament game, unfortunately the stakes are much higher for us than it was for Murray State.  Will the Dems use the Slaughter Rule or just bully their way to the basket in hopes of scoring their historic, and what will become an infamous, victory?  Call your congressman at 1-877-SOB-USOB (no joke, that’s the Capitol switchboard)!

Meanwhile in more news of the absurd…

The Washington Times reported today that the Russians have signed four new contracts with the Cubans to begin drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico.  This is unbelievable.  While not on the scale of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Obama refuses to let America drill for oil while watching the Russians move into the neighborhood to start the black gold out from under us.  Appears the Obama administration, in their infinite wisdom, thinks that we will all be putting windmills in our yards to power our appliances, placing solar panels on our roofs to heat our homes and buying electric cars to drive to work while those silly, foolish Russkies will still be using that planet-killing stuff called oil.

This is a story that will likely fly under the radar due to the healthcare hype, but it is just another item on a long list of stupid decisions this administration and the Democratic Congress is making to weaken America’s position in the world and quite possibly destroy this nation.

The Slaughter Solution – Am I Taking Crazy Pills?!

Most things that occur in Washington DC annoy me, frustrate me or simply make me shake my head in disgust, but the latest balloon floated by House Democrats as a way to cram their government-run healthcare plan down our gullets has literally got me fuming.  The latest idea is called the “Slaughter Solution” not because of what it would do to our Constitution, but because it was proposed by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D., NY), the chair of the House Rules Committee.  What Rep. Slaughter has proposed is nothing short of a circumvention of the US Constitution and the scheme works like this:

1. The House Rules Committee will create a “rule” that deems that the House has passed the Senate’s healthcare bill
2. The House will then vote on said rule and passing it would then deem the Senate healthcare bill to have passed the House, without there actually having been a vote to pass it
3. House and Senate could then vote on legislation that “fixes” the flaws in the Senate bill
4. Assuming the “fix-it” bill passes, the whole package will be sent to the President to sign into law.

Did you catch the key phase in all that?  Did ya? Here it is again…it would then deem the Senate healthcare bill to have passed the House, without there actually having been a vote to pass it. This is absolutely in direct violation of Article 1, Section 7 of the US Constitution which states that the identical bill must pass the House and the Senate before it can be presented to the President for signature into law.  At this point, the Democrats do not have enough votes to pass the healthcare bill on its own, so they have cooked up this scheme to make it so that House members who oppose the Senate bill can claim that they never actually voted for the it, which would technically be true because the House will never have actually voted on the bill!

Do our representatives in Congress actually believe we are that stupid?  Worse yet, are we that stupid?

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, assistant to Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, sent a memo to Democratic staffers laying out the timeline and messaging.  In the memo, Van Hollen advises members not to talk about the process.  Politico reports,

“At this point, we have to just rip the band-aid off and have a vote — up or down; yes or no? Things like reconciliation and what the rules committee does is INSIDE BASEBALL,” the memo says. “People who try and start arguments about process on this are almost always against the actual policy substance too, often times for purely political reasons.”

I know what I am about to write may fall into the “heat of the moment” category, but I have absolutely no intention of abiding by a farcical piece of legislation that is passed in this manner.  I have no idea what I can necessarily do since no one knows exactly what is required of all of us in this 2,500 page monstrosity, but I don’t have to be a Constitutional lawyer to know that it is unconstitutional for the House to pass a bill without having actually voted on it.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R., WI) railed on the whole reconciliation process today during the House Budget Committee mark-up and I encourage you to watch below.  He does an excellent job of summing up the last 12 months of nonsense in less than nine minutes.

Rationing our Elephant Intake

I was recently perusing the Tea Party’s Contract from America site and I have to say that I really like the way the movement is allowing the common man and woman to vote in order to decide what the final ten priorities will be within the contract expected to be unveiled on April 15th.  Seeing the list of proposed priorities as well as reading the multitude of great ideas circulating the Tea Party forums, I think the Tea Party movement needs to keep one thing in mind at all times:

You can’t eat the whole elephant at once.

I understand the excitement and energy behind the Tea Party movement.  As a long-time Republican, it disturbs me to see how many within that party are acting no different than the Democrats we helped them defeat.  Both parties have been spending out of control and leading us down a road to ruin.  The “silent majority” is now becoming quite loud and the Tea Party is providing the voice.

With that said, I fear that the Tea Party may become drunk on its own momentum and start believing that anything and everything they want to fix is possible right now.  Now, while I believe in the power of positive thinking, I also know that with poor planning comes poor performance and some things will take much longer than many of us would like.

To the Tea Party organizers credit, and to many evangelicals chagrin, the Tea Party has stayed focused on fiscal issues.  This is absolutely the right strategy.  A huge majority of Americans support the need to get our country’s fiscal house in order, but as soon as lines start to get drawn in the sand related to social issues, the support for a comprehensive platform will begin to wane.  In my opinion, this is big reason more Americans claim to be Independents rather than Republicans or Democrats.  At this point, Conservative Christians need to realize that for the Tea Party movement to be successful, it must remain focused on the topics that will rally the greatest support from the general public and out-of-control government spending and regulating is the one issue that can unify the largest base at this time.

With that said, I still believe that the message of fiscal conservatism could be in danger of getting spread too thin.  To avoid over-reaching or overshadowing many of our achievable ideas with those that are much more controversial, I would suggest a singular focus as we begin the long march to real fiscal change in the government.  That singular focus needs to be on fixing Congress first.

The public’s belief and trust in Congress is at an all-time low and this body not only controls the purse-strings of the country but passes legislation and regulations that intrude more and more each day into our lives.  We should be laser-like focused on improving this great albatross on our democracy.

I suggest packaging many of the great ideas posed in the forums related to Congress and make that the nucleus of the Tea Party platform.  Ideas such as term limits, citizen funding of elections, transparency of the legislative process and elmination of unrelated amendments attached to bills would be just a few of the sound and Congress-changing type actions that the vast majority of Americans will support.  With this focus, I believe we could begin to elect candidates that would be supportive of these changes or we would garner enough fear and attention of the incumbents that they will be compelled to make these changes for their political life.

Once we begin to fix Congress we will begin to take down an enormous obstacle to many of the more “radical” changes we have in mind – a flat tax or FairTax, reduction or elimination of the IRS, the elimination of Department of Education, entitlement reform, etc.

All of this will take time of course and I would like to think that the Tea Party movement has the patience and the intestinal fortitude for a long battle.  To win the battle we need a focused plan of action and I believe the first step of that plan is to fix Congress.  Three-fourths of America will support us.

Trickle-Down Policy Making

Found this picture and felt like it pretty much sums up our place in the hierarchy: