In a conference call late Thursday afternoon, Brent Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center, reiterated what he said on Fox and Friends earlier in the day that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid appears poised to sneak President Obama’s public-option health care reform proposal into an unrelated bill. Rather then hold a bi-partisan discussion in both the House and the Senate, Bozell says, “You’re going to get Harry Reid’s bill, passed by the Senate, by the Democrats… immediately rubber-stamping it, no debate, no House-Senate conference, no Republican discussion, and it goes right to the president for his signature, and oh, by the way, no one knows what’s in it.” Talk about a nuclear option.
A senior aide to the Nevada Democratic senator told CNSNews.com, a news site operated by MRC, that it is ‘likely’ the Senate Majority Leader will use House Resolution 1586 as a ‘shell’ for enacting the final version of the Senate’s health care legislation. H.R. 1586 was a bill passed this past March in the House that sought to impose a ninety percent tax on bonuses paid to employees of certain bailed-out financial institutions, specifically AIG. Were Senator Reid to do this, the substance of H.R. 1586 would be removed and replaced with whatever the White House and Congressional Democratic leaders ultimately decide will encompass their health care package. A scam such as this would require the support of sixty senators to vote for cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 1586, thus ending debate on the congressional procedure and moving the bill forward. If Reid successfully obtains the sixty votes needed, then debate begins on the health care package. However, Reid could choose to block all amendments and attempt to get a vote on the entire package.
Should the House vote on the bill as passed by the Senate without amending it, it could then be sent directly to President Obama’s desk for his signature (behind closed doors, no doubt, as was the case with the stimulus package) without the need for those pesky checks and balances. Here’s where it gets real scary: the actual text of the legislation will be determined by Reid himself, who at his own leisure can draft and insert textual language that was never approved by either the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee or the Senate Finance Committee.
This all seems a little much to wrap your brain around, right? Why would Senator Harry Reid, who trails in the polls in his own state behind Republican opponents, choose to do this? What politician in their right mind would sign on for this? Democratic candidates across the board are getting clobbered by their Republican opponents, so would this not make a catastrophic situation even worse? There is certainly enough corruption and lack of distain for the American populous to believe that the Democratic majority are capable of such a swindle, but why now? Does Harry Reid, with all his bent up ego, see himself as the modern day General Custer and this is his last stand? That if he is going to go down, he’s going to take every one else with him? From a political scientist stand point, this scenario does not make sense and, if it does come to pass, would only reek of desperation in the eyes of the American people, further damaging what little support the Democrats in Congress find themselves standing with now.
