Senator Byrd and the Use of "Reconcilliation"

The video above has come to light featuring our very own Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) addressing the use of the "reconcilliation" process to force controversial legislation through Congress.  In the speech, made on the floor of the Senate in 2001, Senator Byrd explains how he opposed President Clinton's plan to use reconcilliation to pass Hilarycare.  I have not been able to determine the context of the speech, which was made when George W. Bush was President, but I would assume that he was using his opposition to President Clinton's plan to illustrate why he was opposing some Republican plan to use reconcilliation in 2001.  I seldom agree with Sen. Byrd, but I certainly do agree with him that reconcilliation should never be used to force passage of a controversial bill that does not have the support in Congress to pass by the normal set of parliamentary rules.  I checked Sen. Byrd's website and found nothing regarding Speaker Pelosi's current parliamentary manuevers.  I wonder if he will make the same floor speech this time around.

Notes from Here and There

Watching Sausage Being Made.  Want to understand the parliamentary mechanics required for Speaker Pelosi to get the Senate's Obamacare bill passed in the House of Representatives?  An explanation of the ugly process may be found here and here (if you have the stomach for it).

Debunking More Obamacare Myths.    How often have you heard that the uninsured drive up the cost of health care by using hospital emergency rooms as their source of primary care?  How about the one where the overall health of the nation's populace will improve if we just implement universal care?  Robert J. Samuelson, economist and columnist for The Washington Post, provides proof to the contrary.

Obama the Messianic President?  In case you have ever had any doubts about how The New York Times views President Obama, check out this photo illustration of the President with halo and cross.  I have no words for this one.

A Mountain of Debt, and Other Thoughts for a Monday

When the The New York Times begins to care enough to write about it, the Obama debt situation must really be getting out of control.    Of course, conservative commentators, including me, have been sounding the alarm bells for a long time (IVM discussed the President's money troubles from its founding back in September).  The Times actually sounds like it is concerned today when it notes that an increase in interest rates above the current unheard-of levels will cause Federal debt service payments to skyrocket:

Even a small increase in interest rates has a big impact. An increase of one percentage point in the Treasury’s average cost of borrowing would cost American taxpayers an extra $80 billion this year — about equal to the combined budgets of the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.

But that could seem like a relatively modest pinch. Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price, estimated that the Treasury’s tab for debt service this year would have been $221 billion higher if it had faced the same interest rates as it did last year.

The national debt now tops $12 Trillion.  Increased debt service payments will continue to eat away at available Federal dollars unless the size of the United States' economy grows dramatically.

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Yet another recent event highlights an issue of enormous concern to me:  when will the Obama Administration stand up to the Iranians?  I have written a number of times about the President's unilateral decision to withdraw SDI from Poland and the Czech Republic, a decision that has direct implications to the Iranian situation.  And the President has utterly failed to address Iran's nuclear ambitions, a fact that creates security concerns for Israel, Eastern Europe, Iraq and India.  But why would a "progressive" American President ever want to abandon the moral high ground with respect to human rights and fostering democratic governmental institutions?  Yet the President has done exactly that, in a statement issued, of all times, on the 30th anniversary of the Iranian takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran:

I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect.  We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs.

Beyond the basic fact that this statement was issued on a date commemorated by Iranian's mad mullahs as a great victory by Iran over "The Great Satan", a couple of things jump out at me.  First, the President says in the statement that he seeks a relationship with "the Islamic Republic of Iran."  The "Islamic Republic" is the same government that is now run by the madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who bullied his way to re-election by intimidation and murder.  Why could not the President simply have said that he seeks a relationship with the people--the ordinary citizens--of Iran?  And second, while the President was reaching out to a government run by institutional terrorists, the streets of Tehran were filled with thousands of protesters who risked their very lives to challenge the government of the "Islamic Republic."  Yet the President offered not one single word of encouragement to those brave souls.  Instead, he made it clear that Ahmadinejad should feel free to continue to beat, torture, imprison and kill his domestic challengers because the United States will "not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs."  How can the United States assert any sort of moral superiority when our leader refuses to utter a word of support for those who only want to enjoy the same rights of free speech, free assembly and free association that we enjoy here?

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Ah, the liberal dream that is socialized medicine appears to be dying on the vine of many branches that is the Democratic Party.  To please "progressives" in the Party, any plan must provide coverage for abortion and must include a government-run option.  To the so-called "Blue Dogs" of the Party, the public option is a non-starter, and the final version must show some fiscal restraint.  And while all of the Democrats want to raise our taxes--Democrats LOVE to raise taxes--the Democrats in the House cannot agree with the Democrats in the Senate over which taxes to raise.  So while Harry Reid was able to muster enough votes to move the bill to floor debate in the Senate, he is a looooooong way from herding the cats of his party into the same pen.

My biggest issue:  the pathological lying by Democrats in both houses of Congress over the actual cost of their health care "reform" proposals.  They continue to trumpet that health care reform will actually reduce the deficit over the next ten years.  And how could a Trillion Dollars in new spending possibly reduce the deficit?  Because the Democrats play a parlor trick with the accounting by counting ten years of revenue against only six years of expenses, thus hiding the true cost of their "reform."

And while the Democrats are wasting all of this time and effort on a "reform" proposal that will either (1) fail; or (2) doom the American people to a massive debt burden for as far as the eyes can see, unemployment is reaching higher and higher and higher.  It truly is hard to believe that a gifted politician like Barack Obama can be so tone-deaf when it comes to the actual concerns of the American people.  As his poll numbers continue to slip, he and the Democratic Party-controlled Congress are doing nothing--NOTHING--about the economy.