The American people do not like President Barack Obama’s health care plan. According to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll 42% of Americans “think his plan is a bad idea” compared to only 36% who think it is a good idea. 40% of Americans believe Obama’s health care plan “will result in the quality of your health care getting worse” compared to 24% who believe their care will get better. And 47% of Americans oppose “creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government” compared to only 43% who support it. Facing this cratering of public support, the left in Congress is now considering abandoning moderates and independents to pass their narrow partisan ideal of health reform. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spokesman Jim Manley promised yesterday that Democrats will pass Obamacare “by any legislative means necessary.”

What exactly does Senator Reid mean by ‘any legislative means necessary’? The Wall Street Journal explains: “Most legislation in the Senate requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, but certain budget-related measures can pass with 51 votes through a parliamentary maneuver called reconciliation.” The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 created reconciliation, but Congress didn’t really use it until the 1980s. In 1993, President Bill Clinton tried to use the rule to press his health care plan through the Senate, but Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) resisted, introducing the Byrd Rule which allows any Senator to strike specific provisions or amendments from legislation if a 60 vote Senate majority agrees that the item is “extraneous” to the budget. At the time Byrd specifically argued that health care was out of bounds for a process that was intended to only apply to budgets.

But Democrats in Congress are undeterred by history, precedent, and public opinion. They are now planning to split the bill into two parts: one bill with budget-related matters and another bill with policy changes such as the insurance market reforms. They even are prepared to argue that the core of the left’s health care vision: a government-run health care plan can be considered a budget related item. The WSJ reports: “Democratic leaders have concluded they can pack more of their health overhaul plans under this procedure, congressional aides said. They might even be able to include a public insurance plan to compete with private insurers, a key demand of the party’s liberal wing.”

The American people are already sick and tired of 1,000 page bills and strong arm legislative tactics. A new Gallup poll shows that 82% of Republicans and even 40% of Democrats disapprove of the job Congress is doing. Even more troubling for the “by any means necessary” crowd is that 70% of independents share a negative view of the House and Senate. Finally, a new Pew poll shows that for the first time since President Barack Obama took office the percentage of Americans who hold a favorable view of the Democratic Party has slipped below 50%. How will independents feel about liberals in Congress if they pass a health plan that 40% of Americans believe “will result in the quality of your health care getting worse”?

Quick Hits:

• According to USA Today, the health care fight is driving conservatives to embrace many of the same grassroots, tech-savvy techniques that Democrats used last year to help get Obama elected and providing networking opportunities for Republican conservatives who say they didn’t have a candidate to excite them in last year’s presidential contest.
• According to the National Automobile Dealers Association, the nation’s car dealers have already submitted $3.3 billion in “Cash for Clunkers” claims despite the fact that the Obama administration only has secured $3 billion in deficit spending to cover the program.
• According to the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, while the private sector has shed 6.9 million jobs since the beginning of the recession, state and local governments have expanded their payrolls and added 110,000 jobs.
• According to a new Washington Post poll, 70% of Democrats say removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan has not been worth its costs, while 70% of Republicans say the war is worth fighting.
• House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) is demanding that the nation’s private insurance companies provide “extensive documentation of all “compensation and other business practices in the health insurance industry.”

Charlie Cook, one of the best political handicappers in the business, sent out a special update to Cook Political Report subscribers Thursday that should send shivers down Democratic spines.

Reviewing recent polling and the 2010 election landscape, Cook can envision a scenario in which Democratic House losses could exceed 20 seats.

“These data confirm anecdotal evidence, and our own view, that the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Today, The Cook Political Report’s Congressional election model, based on individual races, is pointing toward a net Democratic loss of between six and 12 seats, but our sense, factoring in macro-political dynamics is that this is far too low,” he wrote.

“Many veteran Congressional election watchers, including Democratic ones, report an eerie sense of déjà vu, with a consensus forming that the chances of Democratic losses going higher than 20 seats is just as good as the chances of Democratic losses going lower than 20 seats.”

Cook scrupulously avoided any mention that Democratic control of the House is in jeopardy but, noting a new Gallup poll showing Congress’ job disapproval at 70 percent among independents, concluded that the post-recess environment could feel considerably different than when Congress left in August.

“We believe it would be a mistake to underestimate the impact that this mood will have on Members of Congress of both parties when they return to Washington in September, if it persists through the end of the Congressional recess.”

By Charles Mahtesian 03:51 PM

Numbered passes will be given to the first 150 who arrive.  These people will be seated in the Auditorium.  The proceedings can he heard outdoors via speakers for the remainder of those attending.  Rep. Solomon Ortiz has declined to attend and Rep. Ruben Hinojosa has not replied.  Their challengers will be present.

YOUR ATTENDANCE IS STRONGLY ENCOURAGED!  

NEXT ITEM — A REMINDER:  RALLY this Saturday from noon to 1:00 p.m. at Solomon Ortiz’s office, 1805 E. Ruben Torres.  Take your letters (hand-written is preferable) to Rep. Ortiz’s office. 

IMPORTANT YOU ATTEND.  WE ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE.

For many members of Congress, this August recess will be unlike any they’ve experienced in a long time. As elected officials get shouted down at town hall meetings across America, the sheer mistrust toward all-things Washington is palpable.

It’s because the American people are being asked to believe the unbelievable. We’re being told that a $1 trillion health care bill will not add to the deficit, that a $1 trillion national energy tax affecting every business in America will not kill jobs, and that a $787 billion unread spending bill is actually saving our economy.

It is this mind-set and denial of reality that gave us the subprime lending disaster, an IOU-issuing Sacramento, and a dysfunctional Detroit. Simply put, people are fed up. To get America back on the right track, we must re-establish a simple premise: 2+2=4.

In its fight to defeat the Communist Party in 1989, the Polish Solidarity Movement adopted the slogan “for Poland to be Poland, 2 + 2 must always = 4.” For 44 years of communist rule, the Poles had been lied to, in effect told that 2+2=5. To challenge the authority of the communists and prosper as a free society, Solidarity chose this slogan because they knew they had to be grounded in truth and reality.

Read the entire article here.

Aug 13, 2:29 PM (ET)
By ANNE FLAHERTY

WASHINGTON (AP) – Amid a boisterous debate on health care reform, people flooded members of Congress on Thursday with so many e-mails that they overloaded the House’s primary Web site.

Technical support issued a warning to congressional staff that the site – - may be slow or unresponsive because of the large volume of e-mail being sent to members.http://www.house.gov

Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the House’s chief administrative officer, which maintains the Web site, said traffic data was not available and could not be released without the lawmakers’ consent.

But anecdotally, he said, the spike in e-mail volume was widely believed to be a result of the health care debate.

“It is clearly health care reform,” Ventura said. “There’s no doubt about it.”

Lawmakers are in their home districts this month for the August recess, where a populist backlash has emerged in some quarters against President Barack Obama’s plan to reform the nation’s health care system.

Democrats are trying desperately to regain control of the debate, with the White House posting a new Web site designed to dispel what it called “the misinformation and baseless smears that are cropping up daily.” House Democratic aides have set up a health care war room out of Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s office. It is designed to help lawmakers answer questions about the legislation.

Ventura said the last time he saw such a significant slow-down in the system was in January, shortly before the House passed an $819 billion bill to stimulate the economy.

Ventura said new technology called “load balancing” is in place to try to handle spikes in volume. So far, the House Web site remains available to the public.

In particular, people are heavily using a link on the site called “Write Your Representative,” which helps a voter track down their representative by plugging in their zip code.

August 14, 2009
By Lee Cary

Obama and Democrat Congressional leaders uncorked the bottle and the peoples’ Genie is out. 

He’s not happy, this Genie. In normal times, he sits there quietly inside the bottle. Sometimes watching. Mostly not. He finds politics boring, if not disgusting.

 He sat and watched in silence as the TARP bill passed. Told the sky was falling, he looked up and saw it wasn’t. But he shrugged, trusting the bipartisan nature of the effort.  Then, as TARP rolled out, he stood up. The bailouts plowed a furrow across his forehead; his eyebrows lowered; his gaze intensified. But he stayed inside the bottle.

 Along came the Stimulus Bill. Or, in the language of the big spenders, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Genie smelled the bacon through the glass bottle. He heard the squeals coming next from the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009.  Another stampede of pigs.  

 Inside the bottle, the Genie’s leaned forward, pressing his hands and nose flat against the glass. As he watched banks and car companies yield to government control, his jaw slid up. His lips pressed tight. His breathing shortened. But he stayed inside the bottle.

 In his peripheral vision he saw a dancing troupe dressed like Cossacks enter the side door of the White House and disappear within. The Czars had come. The Genie watched, and wondered.

 Events outside the bottle picked up speed. More crisis talk was in the air.  He checked the sky again. Still no signs of a falling.

 Then, ever heavier and more complicated legislative tomes rolled out of Congress in carriages drawn by hubris and arrogance. Cap & Trade and Healthcare Reform. Their long official titles no longer impressed the Genie. But their huge price tags did. As did the mounting federal budget deficit for 2009. Now at $1.84 trillion, with more to come.

 By this time, the Genie was rocking his bottle back-and-forth. He tried and failed to get the big spenders’ attention. His mouth moved, but no sound escaped his bottle, at least in the ears of the big spenders and the old news media, becoming ever more irrelevant with each news cycle as they peddle into obscurity. 

 The people felt powerless because they were. They had no voice that carried. The big spenders pretended to listen, but then condescendingly told the people that everything happening was for their own good. It was meant to be, they said. Doing nothing, they said, is worse.

 When the people protested, they were called rightwing extremists, disruptive malcontents, organized mobs, Nazis brown shirts, and other names which they are not. In fact, they’re average American citizens in a nation where nothing is average about them. On the planet, they are the most extraordinary of citizens.

 Calling the people names was the last straw. The Genie tipped the bottle over, put his feet against the cork, and kick his way out.  Beware of an uncorked Genie.

 As this happened, the people started coming to town hall meetings, meant mostly to convince them to go-along to get-along. They held the heavy healthcare bill in their hands. Dog-eared from having been read.  

 The big spenders were shocked to learn that the people had taken time to do what they, the professional legislators, had not done – they’d read the bill!  The people came armed with enlightened questions, reasoned arguments, and impassioned opinions. All things the big spenders lacked. In some cases, numbers were handed out at the entry door to qualify and order those who could speak. Then, one after the other, questioners asked clear, targeted questions. Sharpshooters picked at random. Remarkable. 

 The people stood, a furrow plowed across their foreheads. Their eyebrows lowered. Their chins up, lips pressed tight, gaze intensified. The Genie was out. When the big spenders told them that their reading of the bill was incorrect, the people found their voice. And, though some quivered with nervousness, they pushed against the glass. This time their voice was most definitely heard.

 Obama and the Democrat Congressional leadership let the Genie out of the bottle. It was an unintended consequence of their crass and heavy-handed methods of leadership. They forgot, if they ever knew, that Americans can be led, but they cannot be herded.

 Obama and Friends though it possible to ride roughshod over the Genie’s people.  They remembered the swooning crowds seduced by the oratorical skills of their leader. They assumed his charisma would carry the day, again. The people would fold and comply, even if they might not commit. And, for those who would not fold easily, there was always the muscle mustered from Obama’s acolytes and allies. There was always the hype served up on demand by the old media. There was always the cumulative ridicule and name-calling spit from the lips of their Party leaders. These things would deflect the people’s skepticism and temper their anger. So they thought.

 They were wrong. All these things did was make the people angrier and harden their determination to be heard, and more – to be heeded.   

 One young woman at a town hall meeting said that, for the first time in her life, she was taking politics seriously because so much is at stake. Her freedoms mostly. Her children’s future, too. She said the effort to force the healthcare bill on the people “had awakened a sleeping giant.”  She could have ended her sentence with the words Admiral Isoraku Yamamoto spoke after the Japanese attacked on Pearl Harbor: “I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”    

 We are watching each other stand up in town hall meetings and face their representatives. Those politicians with the courage to attend anyway. We watch live, and we watch on that most sensational and powerful new medium of the web: U-Tube. The peoples’ articulate and courageous statements procreate exponentially, multiplying like amoebas on steroids, as we feed on the resolve of others. A resolve only terrible to those who would silence dissent. Wonderful to the rest of us.

 So the Genie is out of the bottle. And it’ll be a good while before he thinks it safe to crawl back in.

PANORA, Iowa — Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican who is a key bargainer on health care reform, played to packed crowds in his home state of Iowa who left little doubt that they were not happy with what’s on the table.

The questions were tough but respectful, and there was little of the shouting that has dominated similar meetings in other parts of the country.

“It seems to me that people are expressing, not just on health care, but people are just very scared about the direction the country is taking,” said Grassley, who emphasized that he hasn’t signed off on anything.

Grassley is the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and he’s been deep in bargaining seeking a compromise health care plan that could get some Republican votes. He made it clear there are portions of the current measure he can’t swallow.

The boisterous forums held by many federal lawmakers have emphasized the challenge for President Barack Obama’s administration as it tries to win over skeptical voters to an expensive plan to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter and Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill were among those who hosted raucous town halls on Tuesday. Speaking Wednesday in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Specter said that the protesters are “not necessarily representative of America” but should be heard.

“There’s more anger out there now than I have ever seen before,” the Democrat said. “And I think the anger is caused by so many people having lost their jobs and (being) worried about losing their health insurance.”

In North Dakota, a raucous crowd packed a fire hall in Casselton on Wednesday to talk to Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan, with few signs of support for the reform plans. One woman was booed when she said an overhaul is necessary.

Other meetings were less combative. In Kansas, Republican Rep. Lynn Jenkins faced a friendly crowd of more than 200 people, drawing applause as she listed flaws she sees in the legislation before Congress.

Several audience members at Topeka’s Holiday Inn Holidome said they believe Jenkins is listening to them — when the Democrats controlling Congress are not.

“I think that’s where the yelling comes in,” said Jerry Aller, a 55-year-old farmer and postal worker who drove 70 miles from his hometown of Hiawatha.

In Iowa, nearly 500 people jammed a sweltering community center meeting room to see Grassley, with virtually all describing health reform as a government takeover of the nation’s health care system that’s a prescription for disaster.

Charlotte Fett manages a local clinic, and she said doctors are already forced to fight their way through a blizzard of bureaucracy.

“I’m concerned about the layers of regulation that health care has now,” she said. “This will make it worse I think and I’ve been in health care for 40 years.”

“I don’t want the government or a bureaucrat working for the government to come between you and your doctor,” said Grassley. “I think the stakes are very, very high.”

Grassley has opposed Obama’s call for creation of a public option that the president says would drive up competition and force private insurers too reduce their rates. Grassley says only people in the country legally should be covered by a government-funded health care program, and opposes any plan that “determines when you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.”

None of the bills in Congress would provide health insurance to illegal immigrants, but it didn’t keep people from expressing concern about it.

Obama has declared that the provision causing the uproar over end-of-life care only authorizes Medicare to pay doctors for counseling about end-of-life care. He says it would not “basically pull the plug on grandma because we decided that it’s too expensive to let her live anymore.”

National Republicans have seen an opportunity in the health care debate to target vulnerable Democrats. The National Republican Campaign Committee plans to run television and radio advertisements throughout August targeting at least seven members of Congress in competitive races.

By Robert Romano

It is nothing short of a complete political meltdown. Congressional reaction to their own constituents’ opposition to ObamaCare has transformed into a theater of the absurd. And there will be a stiff political price to be paid.

For years, it has become increasingly clear that Congress largely ignores the people they serve. But now it is apparent they actually disdain them, as well. And would like very much if they simply went away. Only, they won’t. So the elected elite is now resorting to ugly threats and name-calling

To put the icing on the cake, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer yesterday leveled the charge that those protesting ObamaCare at town halls nationwide are somehow “simply un-American”. That’s right, the position of the ruling class is that they—and they alone—have the right to debate public policy.

In the pages of USA Today, Pelosi and Hoyer wrote, “These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.”

This is quite simply disgraceful. So much for the patriotic duty to dissent. So much for “open covenants openly arrived at.” Instead, Congress is attempting to intimidate and silence dissent by the American people.

That the American people have dared to challenge the single-most radical changes ever proposed to the American health care system is wholly unsurprising. What is surprising is that Pelosi and her ilk have so little respect for those who believe it is their voices that have been drowned out by a political elite and their media handmaidens.

What, exactly, were the members of Congress expecting? That constituents would be throwing rose petals at their feet when they returned home for August recess touting a $1.5 trillion monstrosity that threatens to ration health care into scarcity?

And yet, Congressman Steve Kagen (WI-CD8) said residents attending a Green Bay town hall meeting were “uncivilized.” Congressman Baron Hill (IN-CD9) said he wants to “control” his town halls: “What I don’t want to do is create an opportunity for the people who are political terrorists to blow up the meeting and not try to answer thoughtful questions.”

Actually, it is Congressman Hill—and all Congressmen for that matter—who should be answering questions.

“Political terrorists”? “Un-American”? These are American citizens—folks who in many cases fought for their right to boldly state their opposition to Congress’ plans to run their lives from afar.

The very flawed argument being leveled by Congress is that by passionately expressing displeasure with their government—a constitutionally-guaranteed right—that ObamaCare opponents are somehow infringing on the prerogatives of Washington’s high-handed and mighty

There are 535 elected members of Congress. Over 500 thousand elected officials in the entire country at the national, state, county, and local level. 2 major political parties. And dozens of minor political parties. And they have instant access to over 1,300 television stations, over 12,000 radio stations, over 1,400 newspapers, and millions upon millions of web pages.

In short, nobody’s voices are being “drowned out,” except for those of the American people’s—who overwhelmingly oppose the radical nationalization of health care. According to Rasmussen Reports, just thirty-two percent of voters nationwide favor a single-payer health care system where the federal government provides coverage for everyone. Fifty-seven percent are opposed to a single-payer plan.

The fact is, Congress has rightly been given an earful by their constituents, who do not want government bureaucrats rationing health care and making medical decisions for them.

Voicing dissent to an unaccountable government Hell-bent on taking over the nation’s entire health care system is not “un-American.” It is the very essence of what America is all about. And Pelosi, Hoyer, Kagen, Hill, et. al., owe the American people an abject apology.

Robert Romano is the ALG Senior News Editor ]]> http://brownsville.rgvtp.com/2009/08/12/153/feed/ 0 http://brownsville.rgvtp.com/2009/08/12/sheila-jackson-lee-talks-on-her-cell-phone-townhall-meeting/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sheila-jackson-lee-talks-on-her-cell-phone-townhall-meeting http://brownsville.rgvtp.com/2009/08/12/sheila-jackson-lee-talks-on-her-cell-phone-townhall-meeting/#comments Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:44:50 +0000 Chris http://brownsville.rgvtp.com/?p=145