Only the House vote matters

Everyone knows the substance of the Senate Obamacare bill is a bloody outrage. It is a naked expression of the Progressive will to power running from the nationalization of health care to the phony accounting, the real tax and price increases, and the massive expansion of bureaucratic intrusion it will accomplish. It places us squarely on the road to serfdom.
It’s easy to get lost in the procedural maneuvering behind Obamacare. At NRO Jeffrey Anderson provides this elementary instruction:

If the House goes first, as now appears to be the plan, and passes the Senate health-care overhaul, the president would then have a bill in hand that had passed both houses of Congress, and — whether reconciliation subsequently succeeded or failed in the Senate — we would have Obamacare.
Reconciliation would then be like the exhibition ice skating in the Olympics after the medals have been awarded: interesting to some, but wholly irrelevant to anything that really matters.
The attention is on the Senate, but the battle is in the House. It’s time for Americans from coast to coast to communicate their clear desires to their congressmen. If Americans don’t want Obamacare — and every indication is that they emphatically don’t — now is the time for swing-district Democrats to hear that full chorus of opposition: loudly, clearly, and forcibly.

We are, in other words, hanging by a thread. Follow Anderson’s link for help in concentrating attention appropriately.
Via Rich Lowry and Repubclic.
UPDATE: Marc Thiessen explains how Nancy Pelosi will game the Stupak 12. I think the question is whether they want to be gamed.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses