Boehner shreds Obama and Pelosi to pieces

Moments before the health care boondoggle passed last night, John Boehner took to the House floor and ripped Democrats a new one. In his own words, "Shame on us, shame on this body, shame on each and every one of you who substitutes your will and your desires above those of your fellow countrymen."

Pelosi now one vote short thanks to unions

Rep. John Boccieri, Democrat of Ohio, just announced that he'll switch his vote from no to yes, and it's not hard to see why.

He is one of four Democrats to switch from no to yes in the past few days as Obama and Democratic leaders try to corral enough votes for the legislation. A vote is expected on Sunday.

Boccieri has been pressured on the issue. Labor unions and other groups backing health care reform ran ads in his district.

Boccieri voted against health care reform the first time around. A Blue Dog moderate and former pilot, he's been remarkably principled in his deliberations over ObamaCare, even turning down a ride on Air Force One with the president. But Boccieri represents a heavily blue collar congressional district near Cleveland. The union pressure proved to be too much.

With Boccieri in the yes column, Fox News counts 215 votes in favor of health care reform. Pelosi and Obama need just one more.

Robert Gibbs won't rule out Slaughter Solution for future bills

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was questioned by Fred Lucas of CNS News yesterday about whether the Slaughter Solution would be used to pass large bills in the future.

Gibbs' dancing around the question speaks volumes about Democrats' plans to get around Republicans in the future. The Slaughter Solution, also known as "deem and pass", is a congressional procedure by which a bill is deemed to be passed by the House if an amendment receives a majority vote. It's been used to ram bills through since the 1970s, but usually only on amendments to legislation. The latest proposed use on the entire package of reconciliation amendments to ObamaCare is unprecedented.

The health care battle has soured relations between both political parties. If Democrats want to pass anything in the wake of ObamaCare, they may have no choice other than deem and pass.

Pelosi ignores congressional rules and Constitution -- Founding Fathers spin in their graves

Last week we declared health care reform dead after the parliamentarian ruled that the president had to sign the Senate bill. This week, we're not so sure. The Democrats have wiggled their way around congressional rules and the Constitution, and may very well be able to ram this monstrosity through.

Despite the ruling of the Senate parliamentarian, House Democrats are still planning to vote on the reconciliation sidecar rather than the Senate bill itself, called the Slaughter Solution. This allows jittery Blue Dog Democrats to vote for health care without technically supporting the pork-laden Senate legislation. It's technically legal -- called a "self-executing rule" in Congress-speak -- but it's never been used to pass a bill this sweeping. All it needs to be approved is a majority vote in the House Rules Committee, which Democrats control 9-5. In 2005, Republicans used a self-executing rule to pass a national debt limit increase. Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, and Louise Slaughter all filed briefs in court to have the vote ruled unconstitutional. Today Pelosi says of the Slaughter Solution, "I like it because people don't have to vote on the Senate bill." ObamaCare is so toxic at this point that the Speaker of the House is openly admitting she's happy her troops don't have to vote for it.

All this still doesn't mean that the bill will pass the House. Thanks to the parliamentarian, Congress can't pass the bill and the sidecar simultaneously. If the House does approve, the legislation will coast through another Senate vote and then land on the president's desk. After this, the Senate will have to take up the reconciliation sidecar. After the bruising legislative battle over the past year, many House Democrats are suspicious of the Senate's ability to get anything done. If the Senate doesn't make good on its promise to amend the bill with a sidecar, special deals like the Cornhusker Kickback will become law. That will mean many Blue Dogs will be toast (if they're not toast already).

But things are unquestionably worse than before. Perennial optimist Jim DeMint said he's less confident about ObamaCare dying than before. Rep. John Larson, vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said yesterday that Democrats have the votes (though that hasn't been confirmed by Pelosi or Clyburn).

If the bill passes, there will almost certainly be a court challenge. Yesterday a former appellate court judge wrote a scathing op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling the Slaughter Solution unconstitutional. But with plenty of progressive judges scattered across the judiciary, nothing is certain at this point.

Health care's last battle

After months of debate and demagoguery by the president, it all comes down to next week.

What's going on? The final push for Obamacare is about to begin. It starts on Monday, when the House Budget Committee will insert reconciliation instructions into the November House health care bill. By late Monday/early Tuesday, Budget will pass this bill and send it to the House Rules Committee, where Pelosi will change the language so that it matches the Senate bill. This is the final compromise legislation that may come to a vote on the House floor within weeks. "They're creating the shell," says Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Why move ahead when the votes aren't there? Pelosi hopes that launching the process will create enough momentum to flip Democrats her way. The clock is ticking. The speaker has two weeks before Congress breaks for Easter Recess. And the recess could kill off health care reform, since many of the wavering Democrats will get an earful from their constituents when they return home. Republicans expect Democrats to lose votes over the break.

This is health care harakiri and Pelosi has to know it. Yesterday the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the president must sign the Senate bill before any changes can be made. With their reconciliation sidecar derailed, dozens of Blue Dog House Democrats will have to vote on a bill larded up with wildly unpopular deals like the Cornhusker Kickback. The latest whip count by the progressive blog FireDogLake has 189 aye votes, 202 nay votes, and the rest undecided. With the public as outraged as they are, it's unlikely very many, if any, of those reps will swing yes. Pelosi is already facing an unlikely alliance of pro-choice Democrats, Hispanic Democrats, a couple of progressives, Blue Dogs, and unified Republicans. The only other solution is if Pelosi has one last procedural trick up her sleeve, but at this point it's hard to imagine what she could do.

Meanwhile Obama is barnstorming around the country trying to close the deal, but it isn't working. Last week Obama gave speeches in Pennsylvania and Missouri, but vulnerable Democratic congressmen refused to show up. This debate has raged for a year and the expenditure of political capital has been great. Next week the President will discover whether it was capital well spent.

Democrats confirm: Health care summit is a fraud

The health care summit is still going on and it's relatively uneventful so far. But it looks like none of that will matter anyways. Democratic strategists have confirmed that the health care summit was a sham to make Republicans look bad.

"A Democratic official said the six-hour summit was expected to 'give a face to gridlock, in the form of House and Senate Republicans.'

Democrats plan to begin rhetorical, and perhaps legislative, steps toward the Democrats-only, or reconciliation, process early next week, the strategists said.

After the summit, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid planned to take the temperature of their caucuses.

'The point [of the summit] is to alter the political atmospherics, and it will take a day or two to sense if it succeeded,' the official said."

Obama is such a stubborn radical, he still plans to jam his bill through. Meanwhile unemployment has skyrocketed and the American people overwhelmingly oppose his health care remedies. Hopefully the bruising that the GOP gave Obama today will only hurt his plans even further. But this much is clear: Obama is hell-bent on passing a health care bill and doesn't care what it takes and who gets sacrificed in the process.

Two serious setbacks for Obama

It's easy to get discouraged about what Barack Obama is doing, but there's always good news out there too. Today, Obama suffered two crucial defeats that he'll remember for a long time.

First, Craig Becker is a goner. Becker was appointed by Obama to serve on the National Labor Relations Board and his nomination has been tied up in the Senate for months. He's a bona fide pro-unions extremist (always a huge surprise in this administration) who wrote in 1993 that workers should be forced to unionize. Today, Senator Ben Nelson, a Democrat from Nebraska, announced that he'll join a Republican filibuster of Becker's nomination. With Scott Brown opposing Becker as well, this is one left-wing loony Democrats don't have the votes to confirm.

Second, ObamaCare is all but dead. This news comes with the actual death of Democratic Rep. John Murtha. Murtha was Pennsylvania's longest-serving congressman and may he rest in peace. But without his vote, and thanks to the premature retirement of Rep. Robert Wexler and the defection of Rep. Joseph Cao, Nancy Pelosi doesn't have the votes to ram the health care bill through the House of Representatives again. Of course, never count out the devious Pelosi. But it looks like the drama of ObamaCare, which sent Obama's approval rating into a free fall and got Scott Brown elected in Massachusetts, is mostly over.