United Liberty

It’s hard to say where ObamaCare is going to wind up. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that Democrats will have the votes by the time they bring the bill to the floor. Rep. John Larson (D-CT), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, says they already have the votes.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), who has been counting votes for the majority, told The Hill that the vote could be put off past Easter (April 4th). House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) shot down both Larson and Clyburn, saying that a vote will come “later in the week.”

To top all of this, President Barack Obama is warning House Democrats that he will not support or campaign for them if they cast a vote against this major part of his domestic agenda. Some Democrats may actually welcome this, as they view their re-election to Congress as more important than Obama’s presidency.

It’s also unclear whether Democrats will use the Slaughter Solution (named after House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter). This rule would deem the Senate version of the health care bill passed up passage of the fixes via reconciliation by the Senate. Such a move could provide political cover during campaigns this fall by giving members in tough re-election bids an excuse to say they didn’t cast a vote for ObamaCare.

On CNN this morning, White House advisor David Axelrod said that passing ObamaCare will help Democrats this year:

“The reality is that we’ve passed these bills through the House and the Senate,” Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said in an interview that airs Sunday on State of the Union. “The Republican candidates are going to campaign against us on it. The question is: We’ve got the vote, are we going to have the achievement? Are we going to have the accomplishment?”

The top Obama adviser also laid out a number of immediate impacts that the White House says will result from passage of the legislation, including prohibiting insurance companies from excluding coverage of pre-existing conditions in children, ending lifetime and annual caps on coverage, closing of the so-called “doughnut hole” in Medicare’s prescription drug coverage, shoring up the financial solvency of the Medicare system, and giving tax credits to small business.

Two Democratic analysts, Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen, disagree with Axelrod on that, as they believe that Democrats are headed for disaster in November should ObamaCare pass:

Republicans started Wednesday off with 37 Democrats firmly against or leaning against voting for ObamaCare. That number dropped to 36 after Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) traded his vote for a ride on Air Force One, or as someone said on Twitter, a chance to sit in the “big boy chair.”

Kucinich had been firmly against the bill because he supports a single payer, government run system. No doubt he got reassurances from President Barack Obama, who has said that his plan is another step in that direction.

Other vote counts indicate that Republicans are still in the game. Byron York counts 209 members against the bill, 204 in support of it and only 18 undecided members. The count over at Fire Dog Lake is 209 against and 205 in favor.

One thing is clear, the only thing bipartisan about this vote is the opposition.

Who are the undecided members?

Here is a list of members that may be sitting on the fence. Some of them probably know how they are voting and are trying to get some thing out of the reconciliation package or a project in some other bill.

Just call these members.

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a preliminary score of ObamaCare that shows an estimated cost of $945 billion over the next 10 years (text of the reconciliation bill was posted online, as well). The CBO also estimates that the legislation will result in deficit reduction of $138 billion over the same period of time. The report also indicates that 98% of the spending in the bill in the first decade comes in the last six years.

Because the estimate came in under $1 trillion, House Democratic leaders feel this helps their cause. Of course, the reason it comes in under $1 trillion is because Democrats tweeked the excise tax on health insurance plans. The legislation is also missing the $300 billion doc fix, which will come out separately.”

Also, it’s important to remember that the CBO score wasn’t a final analysis of the bill if you actually read it (emphasis mine):

Justice John Paul Stevens, who will turn 90 next month and has been on the Supreme Court since 1975, discussed his retirement plans, sort of, in the latest issue of The New Yorker:

How long will Stevens remain on the Court? Good genes (one of his older brothers practiced law until he was ninety-one), a happy home, plenty of exercise, and even more luck could allow Stevens to keep up the fight into his tenth decade. Last December, he had lunch with Peter Isakoff, a Washington lawyer who was one of his early Supreme Court law clerks. “He had just played tennis that morning—singles!—and I was just kind of amazed,” Isakoff recalled. “And so I asked him, ‘Do you still run?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘Well, how else are you going to get to the ball?’ ”

With the election of Barack Obama, the question of Stevens’s retirement has become more pressing. Even though Stevens was appointed by a Republican President, many assume that he would never willingly have turned his seat over to George W. Bush. I asked Stevens about his plans.

“Well, I still have my options open,” he said. “When I decided to just hire one clerk, three of my four clerks last year said they’d work for me next year if I wanted them to. So I have my options still. And then I’ll have to decide soon.” On March 8th, he told me that he would make up his mind in about a month.

(…)

“You can say I will retire within the next three years. I’m sure of that.”

My guess is that it will happen sooner rather than later, possibly this year.

Interestingly, Stevens also weighs in, sort of, on the continuing war of words between the White House and Chief Justice Roberts over the State of the Union:

Despite what seem to be some fairly clear Constitutional objections, there’s is a very good chance that the House of Representatives will be able to get away with the strategy of deeming the Senate bill as having been passed without actually voting on it.

Here’s why.

Ed Morrissey points to Public Citizen v US District Court for DC, a 2005 case from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In that case, Public Citizen was challenging a similar “deeming” rule adopted by the Republican House on a bill to increase the debt limit.

Here’s what the Court said:

According to conservative activist Debbie Schlussel, an overwhelming amount of the revenues from the annual concerts promoted by talk show host Sean Hannity to help families of fallen soldiers are going to pay overhead and other expenses:

[L]ess than 20%–and in two recent years, less than 7% and 4%, respectively–of the money raised by Freedom Alliance went to these causes, while millions of dollars went to expenses, including consultants and apparently to ferret the Hannity posse of family and friends in high style. And, despite Hannity’s statements to the contrary on his nationally syndicated radio show, few of the children of fallen soldiers got more than $1,000-$2,000, with apparently none getting more than $6,000, while Freedom Alliance appears to have spent tens of thousands of dollars for private planes. Moreover, despite written assurances to donors that all money raised would go directly to scholarships for kids of the fallen heroes and not to expenses, has begun charging expenses of nearly $500,000 to give out just over $800,000 in scholarships.
[…]
According to its 2006 tax returns, Freedom Alliance reported revenue of $10, 822, 785, but only $397,900–or a beyond-measly 3.68%–of that was given to the children of fallen troops as scholarships or as aid to severely injured soldiers.

After posting the allegations against Sean Hannity yesterday, I received a response later in the day from the Freedom Alliance, who are calling the charges “false and malicious.”

They note that Hannity has “contributed $100,000 to the Wounded Warriors Foundation, over $200,000 to the 2. Freedom Alliance, and over tens of thousands of dollars to other military charities and individuals.”

The Freedom Alliance also says that the money, currently $15 million, is being disbursed as children of soldiers come of age, and that the money already disbursed cannot be counted as an accurate measure of how the fund has handled money.

You can read Freedom Alliance’s response in full here.

Tom Hanks has caught a great deal of controversy for comments he made regarding World War II:

“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods,” he said. “They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different.”

In both interviews, he made the same conclusion:

“Does that sound familiar to what’s going on today?” he said on MSNBC, comparing the 60-year-old conflict to the modern war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This, of course, raised the ire of some very high-profile conservatives, including the immensely distinguished Victor Davis Hanson:

“Hanks’ comments were sadly infantile pop philosophizing offered by, well, an ignoramus,” wrote Victor Davis Hanson of Pajamas Media.