Policy Snapshots - March 18, 2010

March 18, 2010

Thursday, March 18, 2010

"A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States."

- James Madison (1751-1836)

THE 1,000,000 EMAIL CHALLENGE!

Obama & Pelosi Huff and Puff... But will they blow the House down? The final showdown is here! Play your part by helping the Policy Patriots achieve the NCPA's bold, new challenge:

Help send 1,000,000 emails to Congress by President Obama's deadline of March 18! Go to Action Army and send a letter today!

600,000 Emails Say One Thing: Policy Patriots Are Getting The Job Done. You are the reason why Obama and Pelosi are having such trouble passing ObamaCare. In the last several months, Policy Patriots have sent nearly 600,000 emails to Congress clearly and defiantly communicating your opposition to ObamaCare.

Read More

Source: National Center for Policy Analysis

FACT CHECK ON OBAMACARE

From a fact sheet on Obama's campaign website (PDF link): Obama's plan will save a typical family up to $2,500 on premiums by bringing the health care system into the 21st century: cutting waste, improving technology, expanding coverage to all Americans, and paying for some high-cost cases.

However, the CBO just produced this analysis of the senate health care bill (another PDF link) which concludes that the Senate health care bill will raise the average family's health care premiums by $2,300.

Even Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., is admitting that health care preminums aren't about to go down just because health care reform is passed:

Read more at the Washington Examiner

EXPLANATION OF PELOSI'S 'DEEM AND PASS' HEALTHCARE STRATEGY

by Forest Thigpen

To understand how Speaker Nancy Pelosi could get the healthcare bill through the House without a recorded vote requires some knowledge of how things work in the House.

In short, almost every piece of legislation that comes to the House floor is preceded by a "rule" that directs how the bill will proceed, how much time will be set aside for debate, what amendments - if any - may be offered, and so on.

The rule for the upcoming Reconciliation bill (see definition below) will include a section that will "deem" the House to have passed the Senate healthcare bill if it votes to adopt the rule for the reconciliation bill.

Why are they doing this? First, the healthcare bill that was passed by the Senate does not have enough support to pass the House. The House could amend it and send it back to the Senate, but it would be filibustered, and with Sen. Ted Kennedy replaced by Scott Brown, there are no longer enough votes in the Senate to break the filibuster. Thus, the healthcare bill would die.

With that option gone, the next strategy was to pass a separate bill to fix the Senate version and send that to the Senate. But it, too, would be subject to a filibuster - UNLESS it were introduced as a reconciliation bill. Reconciliation bills are considered under special rules that prohibit them from being filibustered to death in Senate. They get special treatment because they are supposed to have a limited purpose - to change existing laws in order to meet the spending targets in the Congressional Budget Resolution.

House leaders wanted the House to pass Reconciliation before voting on the healthcare bill, hoping it would convince House members to approve the healthcare bill, knowing the fix would was soon to follow. HOWEVER, they discovered they couldnt do that, because a reconciliation bill can only amend existing law, and the Senate-passed bill is not law yet.

So, Pelosi asked nervous House Democrats to trust her. She asked them to approve the Senate-passed bill (which will go to the president and be signed into law) and trust her to immediately pass a reconciliation bill to fix the parts they didnt like. Apparently, that strategy didnt work.

Her next, and presumably last, strategy, was to devise a way for the Senate-passed bill to be approved without House members having to actually vote on it. That brings us to the Slaughter Strategy, named for Rep. Louise Slaughter, who chairs the House Rules Committee. Rep. Slaughter is suggesting the use of a rarely-used rule that allows a bill to be deemed to have been approved, with the presumption being that the Houses approval of a bill to amend a previous bill apparently indicates the Houses approval of that previous bill.

The effect of all this? If the rule on Reconciliation passes, the healthcare bill will be on its way to Obama's desk. Anyone who wants to change the bill will have no opportunity to retrieve it if the fixes they were promised fail to materialize. And no matter what happens in the November elections, it will remain the law of the land, because any bill to repeal it will certainly be vetoed by Obama.

Its as simple as that.

Mississippi Center for Public Policy's mission is to advance the ideals of limited government, free markets, and strong traditional families by influencing public policy, informing the media, and equipping the public with information and perspective to help them understand and defend their liberty.

Mississippi Center for Public Policy's vision is for Mississippi to be a place where entrepreneurs are free to pursue their dreams, parents are free to direct the education and upbringing of their children, government functions according to the principles that enhance freedom, and all Mississippians are free from dependence on government for their daily needs.

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