Patterico's Pontifications

3/11/2010

ObamaCare: Vultures suddenly appear

Filed under: General — Karl @ 10:54 am



[Posted by Karl]

Last month, Cato’s Michael F. Cannon observed:

A good way to tell when ObamaCare is all dead is when Democrats start picking at the carcass for pay-fors.

As Cannon notes, Democrats have a ginormous agenda. With deficit spending unpopular (at least in the abstract), and broad tax hikes generally unpopular, palatable spending cuts are a valuable commodity.

Yet this story from The Hill went largely unnoticed yesterday:

Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), the acting chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said a House-Senate conference might be needed on the $138 billion tax extenders bill being debated in the Senate.

One reason would be differences between the House and Senate over how the legislation should be paid for, Levin said Tuesday.

The Senate bill is partially paid for, but uses offsets included in President Obama’s health care proposal. Since offsets can’t be used in two bills, that’s a problem.

It’s more than a problem. It is likely a conference can find other pay-fors on this (relatively) smaller bill. But the Senate’s raid on ObamaCare pay-fors may suggest a certain lack of confidence in ObamaCare’s chances of passage. The vultures are not committed to picking at the carcass, but they seem to be eyeing a potential meal.

–Karl

23 Responses to “ObamaCare: Vultures suddenly appear”

  1. Karl – Why would something like this slow them down? Given the level of financial chicanery they have engaged in to date, with the biggest whopper ever being that they claim that BarckyCare is deficit neutral or will reduce the deficit, there is nothing to suggest that this would deter them. Didn’t Barcky spend savings from Iraq on about 40 different intiatives during the campaign?

    JD (cc3aa7)

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  4. I’ll relax when I see maggots.

    dfbaskwill (c021f2)

  5. A great line from The Corner: “Democratic leaders should be asking themselves just how they have gotten to the point that their strategy is to amend a law that doesn’t exist yet by passing a bill without voting on it.”

    The answer is because they are so inept that they can’t convince anyone that their legislation ought to be passed on its own merits. Period.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  6. Reid wrote to Senate Republicans about the reconciliation proposal: “If Republicans want to vote against a bill that reduces health care costs, fills the prescription drug ‘donut hole’ for seniors and reduces the deficit, you will have every right to do so,”

    Three lies on one sentence.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  7. “A great line from The Corner: “Democratic leaders should be asking themselves just how they have gotten to the point that their strategy is to amend a law that doesn’t exist yet by passing a bill without voting on it.””

    Indeed. They should just have a vote.

    imdw (05d41e)

  8. To carry the metaphor further; Vultures are not very aggressive unless at their limits so they gather and circle fresh kills for quite a while and make tentative jabs then jump back and wait for any response. They also are waiting to see if any larger predator or scavenger shows up to claim the kill (plus the larger predators/scavengers are more able to tear and gnaw into the carcass) so unless the kill is very long dead and well chewed, it can take a while. If they’re nibbling now, it’s only because technically the bill is still alive due to proclamations by it’s zombie masters.

    That the Hispanic caucus has stuck it’s 2 pesos (I denounce myself as a racist for that) in now, tells me that they’re convinced it’s dead so they’re going to get some P.R. (no, not Puerto Rican) for standing up to the ‘gringos’ and trying to get some of their own back to their comprades/campesinos.

    jakee308 (ecc95d)

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  10. Reid’s family in serious accident.

    Kevin Murphy (3c3db0)

  11. Is this why they’re still pushing cap & trade? So they can scavenge it for pay-fors?

    Molon Labe (640aad)

  12. Democratic leaders should be asking themselves just how they have gotten to the point that their strategy is to amend a law that doesn’t exist yet by passing a bill without voting on it.

    I think the following quote answers this question rather well. And it should be noted that there is no aid and comfort afforded to Republicans in regard to the sentiment within:

    “The legislature, like the executive, has ceased, save indirectly, to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature, in the main, of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle – a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.”

    H.L. Mencken writing in the American Mercury, May 1930.

    political agnostic (5eb836)

  13. Democratic leaders should be asking themselves just how they have gotten to the point that their strategy is to amend a law that doesn’t exist yet by passing a bill without voting on it.

    That is a quite beautiful sentence.

    JD (cc3aa7)

  14. Absolutely the best comment I’ve read yet on this disaster (from National Review):

    “Democratic leaders should be asking themselves just how they have gotten to the point that their strategy is to amend a law that doesn’t exist yet by passing a bill without voting on it.”

    http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzdjZDRiNWIxMzI3NDlhNWVjZDcyZDFkOWQ1NzBkZGM=

    DaveinPhoenix (91be24)

  15. And one possible response would be that tangled webs are the result of deceptive practices.

    ropelight (1b4fe0)

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