Expect More of This In the Next Week or Two

I am shocked, SHOCKED, that anyone would compare Chicago politicians to gangsters.
Wait, thats redundant, isn't it?

Final 'reform' push: twisting arms

President Obama's attempts to ram health- care reform through an increasingly reluctant Congress are starting to resemble a really eventful episode of "The Sopranos." Whether or not you believe former Rep. Eric Massa's bizarre accusations of locker-room confrontations and conspiracies to drive him from office, there is no doubt that the Obama administration and its congressional allies are willing to use every trick in the book to get this bill passed.

They've already bought votes with pork and special deals -- the "Louisiana purchase" ($300 million to bolster that state's Medicaid program, which swayed Sen. Mary Landrieu); the "Cornhusker kickback" ($100 million to Medicaid there, sweetening the pot for Sen. Ben Nelson), and Florida's "Gator Aid" (a Medicare deal potentially worth $5 billion, a hefty price for Sen. Bill Nelson's vote). Plus the millions for Connecticut hospitals, Montana asbestos abatement and so on.

Nor were the Obamans willing to let a little thing like election laws stand in the way. They rewrote Massachusetts law to allow for an appointed senator to hold office for several months, hoping to get the bill through before the special election that Scott Brown ultimately won. Their plans spoiled, they even considered holding up Brown's seating to let the appointed senator continue to vote on health care -- until public outrage forced them to back down.

And, of course, there has been an unprecedented willingness to ignore congressional rules -- from the failure to appoint a "conference committee" to negotiate differences between the House and Senate bills, to their current plans to use the reconciliation process to bypass a Republican filibuster.

Expect the tactics to get even dirtier now.

Those who support the president can expect favors. No sooner had Rep Jim Matheson (D-Utah) suggested that he might be willing to switch his vote and support the latest version of ObamaCare than his brother was nominated for a federal judgeship.

Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) is also on the undecided list. And, purely by coincidence no doubt, the Justice Department just announced that it is dropping an FBI investigation that has been swirling about the congressman. Gosh, if only Charlie Rangel were one of the undecideds.

Those who oppose the president can expect the political equivalent of a horse head between their sheets.

Read more:

Kill the Bill or Kill the Jobs-Your Choice

Heritage Morning Bell-Jobs

Speaker Pelosi's Job-Killing Agenda

After a three-week holiday break, the House of Representatives returned to session yesterday, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) marked the occasion with an op-ed detailing her "record of achievement" and outlining her agenda for the rest of the 111th Congress. Pelosi writes: "At the halfway mark in this Congress, our priorities are clear: strengthening the security of the American people and building a new economy that offers our families lasting prosperity." But the 111th Congress is not the first Congress Speaker Pelosi has presided over.

When Pelosi was first handed the gavel in January 2007, the U.S. economy employed 137.3 million people and our nation's unemployment rate stood at 4.6%. According to the Labor Department's most recent report, the U.S. economy has shed 6.3 million jobs since then, and 10% of our workforce is now unemployed.

Speaker Pelosi goes on to claim that President Barack Obama's failed stimulus has "created or saved" 1.6 million jobs so far, but even the White House has abandoned its controversial "saved or created" jobs accounting scheme after more than 90,000 of the 640,000 jobs it claimed to create were found to be completely fraudulent.

Pelosi then touts the Cash for Clunkers program as another success despite the fact the program did nothing to create auto sector jobs, led to a crash in auto sales, and Did nothing to help the environment. Pelosi also celebrated the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which only further bankrupts our states and inched us ever closer to government-run health care.

Even worse then her past "accomplishments" is Speaker Pelosi's future agenda, which basically calls for super-sizing the policy failures mentioned above. First on the agenda is President Obama's health care plan which, like SCHIP, expands health insurance coverage through the welfare state. Both the House and Senate bills achieve over half of their health insurance expansion through Medicaid, which is a welfare program. The taxes and employer mandates used to pay for the expanded coverage are going to hit small businesses hard at a time when we desperately need them to be creating new jobs to move us out of recession.

After health care, Speaker Pelosi is promising continued action on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation, which is built on the same failed policy ideas behind Cash for Clunkers. A Heritage Foundation analysis of the Waxman-Markey energy legislation found that for a household of four, energy costs (electric, natural gas, gasoline expenses) would rise by $436 in 2012 and by $1,241 by 2035, averaging $829 over that period. Higher energy costs would also increase the cost of many other products and services. Overall, Waxman-Markey would reduce gross domestic product by $393 billion annually and by a total of $9.4 trillion by 2035.

Finally, Pelosi promises "the most sweeping reform of the financial industry since the Great Depression." But as Heritage fellow James Gattuso has previously demonstrated, the House financial overhaul bill would give financial regulators sweeping powers to control firms deemed “too big to fail” and establish a fund for FDIC to use to resolve the affairs of firms it takes over. The real-life effect of the new powers would be to signal to markets that firms are supported by the federal government and guaranteed against failure — thus leading them to take more undue risks, not less. Pelosi will have essentially created a permanent TARP.

We share Speaker Pelosi's vision for "swift action to restore accountability to Washington and opportunity for the middle class, to create good-paying jobs for our workers, to use innovation to power America in a global economy and build a strong and smart national defense." But as business owners, small and large, across the country are saying, Speaker Pelosi's big government solutions are not the answer.

We Don't Want An Apology-Go Away

More after the jump.

Webb and Warner owe Virginia an apology

Senators place party before commonwealth

Two weeks ago, while most Virginians prepared to celebrate Christmas with family and friends, Virginia's two senators quietly broke faith with the commonwealth, voting for the Obama health care bill. In addition to adding an estimated 261,927 people to Virginia's Medicaid rolls, Sens. James Webb and Mark Warner "charitably" committed Virginians to pick up the Medicaid tab for half-a-dozen other states.

Medicaid already is so expensive that it threatens to bust the bank in Virginia. We commit one-sixth of the state budget to Medicaid - $7 billion a year. Now Virginia's two senators hope to impose on their own state a federally mandated increase in Medicaid enrollment of nearly 30 percent.

Skilled politicians that they are, Messrs. Webb and Warner hedged, of course: They expressed a few doubts, uttered a few platitudes about cost-cutting, and touted their "independence" and credentials as mavericks. But at the end of the day, they were right there with President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, burdening Virginia with new costs we can only begin to fathom.

Mr. Webb, in particular, had the tough talk down pat - insisting that true reform must not create "a cumbersome, overly bureaucratic system." He pledged that his vote would be contingent on eliminating proposed Medicaid cuts, excluding abortion coverage, and ensuring fair and equal treatment. His statements were refreshing - and ultimately meaningless. Mr. Webb's Democratic colleagues ignored his objections, and he dutifully and passively submitted, voting for precisely the kind of bill he said he would reject.