Yesterday on the House Floor, some members of Congress gave one minute speeches to other members of Congress and to Speaker Pelosi (of course she was not in attendance…she was probably making back room deals again). But Congressman Burton basically tells her the American people are not stupid and won’t buy into this game she is playing!

Nancy Pelosi has dug in her high heels and is saying an emphatic “NO!” to a televised Conference Committee on House and Senate health care negotiations.  But wasn’t it our fear(ful?) leader who campaigned on televised negotiations on health care?

Those 8 lies promises apparently don’t bother Madam Pelosi. She also doesn’t think too much of the President’s so-called promises.

Pelosi emerged from a meeting with her leadership team and committee chairs in the Capitol to face an aggressive throng of reporters who immediately hit her with C-SPAN’s request that she permit closed-door final talks on the bill to be televised.

A reporter reminded the San Francisco Democrat that in 2008, then-candidate Obama opined that all such negotiations be open to C-SPAN cameras.

“There are a number of things he was for on the campaign trail,” quipped Pelosi, who has no intention of making the deliberations public.

People familiar with Pelosi’s thinking wasted little time in explaining precisely what she meant by a “number of things” — saying it reflected weeks of simmering tension on health care between two Democratic power players who have functioned largely in lock step during Obama’s first year in office.

So will the President make good on his campaign promise or will he succumb to Nancy Pelosi’s closed door whims and make himself a liar?

Shocking, I know.  I’m actually using a quote President Obama used on the campaign trail when he was talking about how open his government and congress would be under his presidency.

I know it’s tough for the President to live up to his own standards (and hold Congress to them as well), but couldn’t Nancy Pelosi at least pretend to believe in total transparency?  Apparently not even as she attempted to redefine transparency in an interview with “The Hill” after the firestorm that has erupted from the letter that C-SPAN founder (and Purdue grad) Brian Lamb wrote to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid regarding the televising of the Conference Committee meetings on the reconciliation of the House and Senate Health Care bills.

(Emphasis mine)

“There has never been a more open process for any legislation,” Pelosi said at a press conference.

Pelosi also hinted that holding informal negotiations–likely without TV cameras–might be the most practical way to push the legislation through.

“We will do what is necessary to pass the bill,” Pelosi said.

Apparently, being the most transparent only goes far enough. Transparency ends at the Conference Committee door. Then again, according to Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen, there may not even be a Conference Committee on the health care bills.

Pressed on whether C-SPAN cameras would be allowed in negotiations, Van Hollen hedged.

“We don’t even know if there’s going to be a conference committee,” he said, alluding to the likelihood that Democrats will reconcile the two bills behind closed doors.

Again, emphasis mine.

Sometimes you have to wonder if these Democrats, when trying to defend the way they’ve handled health care negotiations, even know what transparency means.

So I was reading The Hill this evening and while getting my political junkie fix, this story caught my eyes. Speaker Pelosi says “Americans could absorb increased deficit if it means jobs”.

From The Hill

Americans could be ready to “absorb” increases to the deficit if it means higher employment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Tuesday.

As the Congress prepares to put together a new spending package focused on creating new jobs in the U.S., the Speaker said that while it’s a “false choice” to pose the situation facing lawmakers as a balance between jobs and increased deficits, Americans would rather have jobs.

“So if somebody has the idea that the percentage of GDP of what our national debt is will go up a bit, but they will now — and their neighbors and their children will — have jobs, I think they could absorb that,” Pelosi said in a conference call with liberal bloggers on Tuesday, audio of which was posted by ThinkProgress.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has said that the lower chamber hopes to move a jobs package by the Christmas holiday recess. Democrats have begun exploring different options for creating jobs, especially as unemployment continues to rise while 2010, an election year for lawmakers, quickly approaches.

Pelosi said deficit growth has been “stunning,” but rejected the idea that a jobs bill would necessarily pose a threat to the deficit.

“We don’t subscribe to the idea that some are for deficit reduction and some are for job creation; we think, again, as I said at the beginning, that’s a false choice,” she said. “We’re never going to decrease the deficit until we create jobs, bring revenue into the Treasury, stimulate the economy so we have growth.”

The Speaker said Democrats must also “shed any weakness” about being confrontational on the issue out of fear that the party would be labeled as insensitive to the deficit.

Pelosi suggested, too, that if lawmakers are reluctant to spend for job creation, similar problems that plagued the U.S. during the Great Depression may strike again.

“If we pull our punch, as they did in the mid-’30s, we shouldn’t be surprised if history repeats itself,” she explained.

“It’s a very important debate for us to have in this country, and I would hope that the president’s speech would be a balance between job creation and sensitive to deficit reduction,” Pelosi added. “But I think if anybody is asked in the public, ‘Would you rather have a job or a percentage of GDP or our national debt will go up a little bit?,’ I think everybody wants a job.”

Let’s look at this a minute shall we? Pelosi has offered different packages none of which did nothing to stimulate the economy, but only created more government and more debt. The last stimulus package hasn’t accomplished anything, save for creating jobs and allocating money to over 400 non-existent congressional districts, and now she wants Stimulus Package Part 2 “The Quest for More Money”. The House passed “Health Care Reform” which, if signed into law, will cause nothing but more government and red tape including the creation or expansion of over 130 agencies. Yeah, because this is what the people want!

Read more after the leap.

There were quite a few highlights during Saturday’s health care debate.  But before the outcome was determined, Congressman Mark Souder took the time to put a sappy Nancy Pelosi in her place.

(H/T – @daltonsbriefs via Gateway Pundit)

It’s come down to this.  According to The Hill, House Democrats are pushing for a vote on Pelosicare this Saturday, possibly at 6pm.

An aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that a vote could happen at 6 p.m. on Saturday, a schedule House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) suggested in reports Wednesday afternoon.

“It could happen at 6 p.m. on Saturday, but no final decisions have been made,” said Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for Pelosi.

House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) said the goal is to finish Saturday evening. It’s not clear at this point, she said, whether the goal is to finish by 6 p.m. or start voting at 6 p.m.

This is the second health care reform bill the Democrats have worked to get out of the House.  Their original bill, H.R. 3200 the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, has been tossed aside for Nancy Pelosi’s H.R. 3962 the “Affordable Health Care for America Act” which now sits at 2,032 pages, a gross size for any piece of legislation.

And while the Democrats have demonized Republicans for not offering any alternatives )a laughable notion as members of the Republican Study Committee have offered over 40 health care bills which have been relegated to sit in committee) it would appear as if the Democrats only hump they have to get over is themselves if they want this bill to pass.

According to the Congress Daily section of National Journal:

(Read more after the leap)

The most ethical congress evah!!

The audacity of arrogance this congress and their majority “leaders” is comtemptable.  The Democrats “Closed Door  Policy” has claimed to want Republican input into the health care debate, yet has shut them out on not only health care, but multiple issues throughout the year.  Let us recount the ways:

Via Human Events:

Republicans have caught the Democrats in a midnight “stimulus” power play that seeks to cut Republican conferees out of the House-Senate negotiations to resolve a final version of the Obama “stimulus” package. Staff members from the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) met last night to put together the “stimulus” conference report.

They intend to attempt to shove this $1.3 trillion spending bill through in the dead of the night without Republican input so floor action can take place in both chambers on Thursday.

Via The Hill:

Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) locked Republicans out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee room to keep them from meeting when Democrats aren’t present.

Towns’ action came after repeated public ridicule from the leading Republican on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), over Towns’s failure to launch an investigation into Countrywide Mortgage’s reported sweetheart deals to VIPs.

…

A GOP committee staffer captured video of Democrats leaving their separate meeting in private chambers after the mark-up was supposed to have begun. He spliced the video to other footage of the Democrats’ empty chairs at the hearing room, set it to the tune of “Hit the Road, Jack” and posted it on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s minority webpage, where it remained as of press time.

Towns’s staffers told Republicans they were not happy about the presence of the video camera in the hearing room when they were not present. Issa’s spokesman said the Democrats readily acknowledged to Republicans that they changed the locks in retaliation to the videotape of the Democrats’ absence from the business meeting even though committee rules allow meetings to be taped.

And there’s more to this story too:

(More after the leap)

It’s a riveting 1,990 page turner.  Right now it’s bigger the the Baucus Bill that came out of the Senate Finance Committee.  It’s also bigger than the original bill coming out the House, HR 3200.  We don’t know if it’s bigger than Harry Reid’s combo Senate Bill because he won’t let any of the Senators see the text of it yet.

House Democrats Health Care Reform Bill

Queen Nancy didn’t seem to happy that King Harry touched her. Harry…you know you must ask the Queen before interrupting or touching…right? Something tells me things are not going well within the Democrat Party and it’s Leaders….

Sounds like President Obama has been watching Mel Gibson’s Conspiracy Theory way too much lately.

Via the Washington Times

“I think early on, a decision was made by the Republican leadership that said, ‘Look, let’s not give him a victory, maybe we can have a replay of 1993, ‘94, when Clinton came in, he failed on health care and then we won in the mid-term elections and we got the majority. And I think there are some folks who are taking a page out that playbook,” the president said.

Are there similarities between 1993 and 2009? Sure. In each year, you’ve had two Democratic president’s following a President Bush who foolishly decided to pursue government controlled health care their first years in office. And then there is the similar makeup of each chambers of congress.

1993 (103rd Congress)
Senate Democratic Party 57     House Democratic Party 258
Republican Party 43                      Republican Party 176

2009 (111th Congress)
Senate Democratic Party  60    House Democratic Party 256
Republican Party 40                     Republican Party 178

At this point, the similarities end there. Because as Bill Clinton, with this majorities in the House and Senate could have passed government run health care, so too can Barack Obama. Every time the stumbling block for the Democrats, so far has been their own party.

Then again, President Obama may have read the latest report from Charlie Cook.

Reviewing recent polling and the 2010 election landscape, Cook can envision a scenario in which Democratic House losses could exceed 20 seats.

…

“Many veteran Congressional election watchers, including Democratic ones, report an eerie sense of déjà vu, with a consensus forming that the chances of Democratic losses going higher than 20 seats is just as good as the chances of Democratic losses going lower than 20 seats.”

So much for the conspiracy.  But that doesn’t stop Obama from keeping on message and blaming a Republican minority that couldn’t stop the passage of his health care reform without the help of Democrats.

(Read more after the leap)