From The Hill:

Top Democrats confirmed Saturday that the House would hold separate votes on the Senate healthcare bill and the reconciliation bill, making fixes to it.

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), one of the chief deputy whips, Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.), and Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), all of whom said that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) won’t use the tactic of deem and pass for healthcare reform.

The move effectively kills the “deem and pass” strategy Democrats had been eyeing to make changes to the Senate bill through a rule on the bill, which at the same time would have deemed the original Senate healthcare bill to have passed the House.

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In Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse Five, the main character, Billy Pilgrim, is an American POW who hides in a meat cellar as Dresden is being fire bombed.

In 2010, the Slaughterhouse Three, Obama, Pelosi and Reid, shove every American in a meat cellar as they fire bomb America with their rationing-based health care plan. ObamaCare is a plan designed to strip Freedom and Liberty from every American.

Obama, Pelosi and Reid now have decided to avoid an up/down House vote on the Senate Bill and to enforce the “Slaughter House Rule”. In other words, when you do not have the votes, just change the rules, pass the changes to the bill and pretend you passed the “real” bill. Previously, the public was outraged that members of Congress did not read the bill prior to voting. This is even worse. With this latest charade, Obama, Pelosi and Reid are forcing House members to pass the bill without voting on the bill. …So much for a democratic republic and The Constitution.

The latest version of ObamaCare is troubling on many fronts. ObamaCare takes control of every American’s health care life. This plan would not improve the current system, and is fatally flawed because it:

• Rations and denies access to healthcare. Denying access to healthcare is the most inhumane and unethical means of cutting costs;
• Costs $1 TRILLION ( $100 Billion more than The Senate Bill) ;
• Creates over 110 Federal Agencies, commissions and boards;
• Creates The Health Insurance Rate Authority….a direct violation of States’ Rights;
• Establishes a “ Comprehensive Database” on Americans;

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We were elected to make tough choices, not run from them.  On Thursday, House Democrats sparked widespread outrage by voting to authorize the use of the controversial “Slaughter Solution” to force amassive government takeover of health care through the House without voting on it.  They voted to protect themselves instead of their constituents, who are fed up with the lack of accountability and transparency in Washington.  But there is no hiding from this vote.

That’s one reason why I sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) requesting that she hold a special “call of the roll” for the final health care vote this weekend.  Under this procedure, each lawmaker will be required to stand up and declare how he or she is voting on this bill.  This weekend’s votes will be among the most consequential votes we will ever cast as Members of Congress. I believe the stakes are too high, and this bill too controversial, for anything less than complete transparency and accountability.  It’s time to stand up and be counted.  I discuss the letter and the vote this weekend in the weekly GOP address you can view here:

Democratic leaders keep telling their Members that once this bill passes, it will be more popular.  They’re dead wrong.  Seniors will be furious about the Medicare cuts.  Small businesses will be furious about thejob-killing new taxes and mandates.  Veterans will be furious that it doesn’t protect Tricare.  And EVERYONE will be furious about the army of new IRS agents.

That’s why the only responsible course of action is to scrap this health care bill.  Let’s start over with a clean sheet of paper.

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As we write this short essay, we are being promised by Nancy Pelosi that the health care bill will be posted online so that we and those who will “deem” it already to have been enacted can actually read it. This online posting has been repeatedly postponed so that the Congressional Budget Office could score it for its 10-year cost. That exercise, which went on behind closed doors, has been tainted by secret deals, and new stealth taxes slipped in at the last minute without disclosure or debate and are based on assumptions provided by the House leadership which the CBO is required to follow. Only this weekend will the 535 members of Congress and the American people be given an opportunity to see what is in the surprise package consisting of over 2700 pages of text. They will have 72 hours to read it before they “deem” it to be the law of the land. Presumably, they have completed the Evelyn Woods speed-reading course. We believe that millions of Americans will “deem” those Members of Congress who actually participate in this farce to be unworthy of further service. Of course, they, unlike their Congresspersons, will actually have to vote.

We make no secret about our negative view of this legislation as bad public policy. But something far more important is at work here. We would rather have the House pass the bill in normal fashion even if only by a tiny margin (as they did with their first version in November 2009) and have it properly enacted into law, than to use trickery and deceit to get their way.

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This week, the vast majority of the American people have nominated a motley crew of elitists for the “Educated Idiots Award:”

The arrogant Democrats who will defy the American people and abet Obama’s nearly trillion dollar government takeover of Americans’ health care.

Embodying the arrogant intellectuals unacquainted with real life who foist their insane ideas on the rest of us, these ideologically addled Democrats:

1. Feel they are smarter than you;

2. Believe they can run your life better than you; and,

3. Consider themselves your masters not your servants.

Because of these self-anointed, educated idiots our nation’s revolutionary experiment in freedom and self-government teeters on the precipice of implosion.

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All over the country, voters have been flooding their representatives with calls, letters and emails urging them to kill the current healthcare bill. Instead of killing the healthcare bill, Congress is now talking about the “Slaughter solution.”

Don’t be confused. The “Slaughter solution” has nothing to do with killing the bill. It is actually named after Democratic congresswoman Louise Slaughter, chair of the House Rules Committee. It is a backdoor, parliamentary procedure in which the House can pass the healthcare bill without even voting on it. Certain members of Congress think that the American people are so stupid that this backdoor trick will actually work in fooling them.

It won’t work.

In 1994, the Democrat controlled Congress tried to pass the same type of healthcare overhaul, except this time they called it “Hillarycare.” While Hillarycare didn’t pass, it led to the biggest overturn in power since President Truman. Voters were outraged that Congress even tried such a power grab. I can’t imagine they will react any differently if Congress actually goes through with this overhaul—let alone pass it through a cowardly backhanded technique.

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In yet another admirable display of the right kind of Attorney General activism, Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli has put House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on notice that what she and the Democratic leadership are reportedly scheming to pass Health Care ‘reform’ is not only wrong — it’s unconstitutional.

3.18.10 KConPelosi

Amidst discussion and arguments surrounding health care reform, is the effect passage will have on the re-election of Democrats in the Fall. The health care reform legislation currently in front of Congress is so widely unpopular on both sides of the aisle that Democrats have taken up the idea for a process called, “deem and pass” to get health care reform passed through.

Deem and pass is a process by which House Democrats will be able to avoid taking recorded votes on the Senate health care bill. Given the political environment and discussion within the blogosphere and mainstream media, the motives behind enacting this process specifically for this bill are highly transparent.

In a letter to the Speaker, above, Cuccinelli wrote, “A bill of this magnitude should not be passed using this maneuver. As the President noted last week, the American people are entitled to an up or down vote.” (He’s not exaggerating when he talks of the “magnitude” of this bill. It’s said to project up 2.5 trillion dollars in new spending).

“Based upon media interviews and statements which I have seen, you are considering this approach because it might somehow shield members of Congress from taking a recorded vote on an overwhelmingly unpopular Senate bill.”

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Below is the just-released text of the House Reconciliation Bill. In the strange, ‘through the looking glass’ world that is the House Democrat Leadership, they will vote for these “fixes” to the Senate passed health care bill. In voting for these fixes, the House will ‘deem’ that the Senate Health Care bill is passed. See, the Democrats can vote for the fixes without having to vote for the bill that is being fixed.We already knew they don’t have to read bills to pass them. Now, they don’t have to vote for them either.

The Senate, then, will dutifully enact all of these “fixes,” by using elaborate procedural tricks and at least a couple votes to override the Senate Parliamentarian. Right, like that is going to happen.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to force a vote on the health care bill this week, and people need to contact their representatives to urge them to vote “No.” This legislation will force tax increases, it will increase the cost of health care and it will force cuts to Medicare benefits. If that wasn’t enough, the House leadership is resorting to procedural tricks to pass legislation that most Americans don’t want. It’s just bad medicine.

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The always impressive John Kass in today’s Chicago Tribune:

Not even three or four pipes full of Hopium could have convinced me that the Congress of the United States would ever start looking like the Chicago City Council.

But now, with the Chicago Way White House twisting arms for its federal health care legislation, Democrats in Congress and Chicago aldermen are beginning to share a remarkable resemblance.

They’re starting to look like fall guys.

“The Congress? They’re acting like aldermen. Like fall guys. And we know all about fall guys in the city of Chicago,” said Jim Laski, a former Chicago alderman and former federal inmate who is now a WGN radio talk show host.

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As it becomes more difficult to round up Congressman willing to end their political careers by voting for ObamaCare, House Democrat Leadership is actually considering a “rule” that will allow the health care bill to pass without being voted on. Putting a positive spin on such a desperate and unconstitutional act defies the laws of physics. Michael Ramirez at Investors Business Daily perfectly captures the “through the looking glass” world we now inhabit: