By Steve McCann, American Thinker

Obama has found himself on the edge

President Obama’s attempt to paint the Republicans into a corner with his latest health care reform proposal, and his determination to pass health care reform using outright lies and obfuscation, highlights what has become the motto of this administration: The end justifies any means. Is this what the majority of the Left in America signed onto?

In President Obama’s desperation to pass his radical health care reform bill, we have had the public show of the Obama administration and the (once-)mainstream media searching in vain for that elusive consensus that those dastardly Republicans, who only want to see the president fail, refuse to provide.

The Democrats and the president have not been able to bribe or coerce any Republicans into backing either the House or Senate version of the health care bill. The strategy was altered to rely on the (once-)mainstream media to portray the Republican Party as evil, obstructionist, in the pocket of big business, against the little guy, and the personification of hate…thus the Blair House “bipartisan” show produced and directed by the president himself.

Before the ascendancy of the alternate media, this was a very successful tactic in intimidating some Republicans into voting for a bill providing the Democrats with the façade of consensus. But thanks to the internet, talk radio and cable news, the current Republicans in office are not as easily cowed as many of their predecessors were. Nonetheless, the Obama administration reverted to this now-threadbare maneuver when it came to their last-ditch effort to push health care reform.

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By Ken Blackwell, American Thinker

 The evils of Obamacare Home Visits Exposed

It’s all supposed to be voluntary, those "home visits" that are tucked into the mammoth Obamacare bill. If you have a strong stomach, and a stronger bottom, you can find home visitation on pages 568-595. That’s Section 2951 of H.R. 3590, the Senate bill that Harry Reid brought down the chimney on Christmas Eve.

All voluntary, they say, but once you "volunteer" to have the oh-so-helpful folks from Social Services come in to help with your newborns, or with a number of other specified issues, will you ever be able to get rid of them?

The bill provides for federal funding and supervision for this vast expansion of government intrusion into family life. This is the Nanny State on steroids.

Is your family being "targeted" for such home visitations? Let’s see if you fit into one of these very broad categories:

Families where Mom is not yet 21. (No mention here whether she is married or not.)

Families where someone is a tobacco user. (Does this include the White House? Watch out, Sasha and Malia! Does Grandpa, whom you love and have taken in, enjoy his after-dinner pipe?)

Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities.

As if that list were not wide-ranging enough, here’s the net that can encompass tens of millions:

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By Mark Steyn, National Review

 Mr. Cool wants to greatly increase the size of government

So there was President Obama giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that “now is the hour when we must seize the moment,” the same moment he’s been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats.

Why is he doing this? Why let “health” “care” “reform” stagger on like the rotting husk in a low-grade creature feature who refuses to stay dead no matter how many stakes you pound through his chest?

Because it’s worth it. Big time. I’ve been saying in this space for two years that the governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible. In most of the rest of the Western world, there are still nominally “conservative” parties, and they even win elections occasionally, but not to any great effect (let’s not forget that Jacques Chirac was, in French terms, a “conservative”). The result is a kind of two-party one-party state: Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless.

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By GEOFF EARLE, New York Post

 Obama asks Dems to pass Healthcare to save his presidency

President Obama yesterday pushed wavering House members to OK health-care legislation for his own political standing and for theirs, as the battle came down to a bare-knuckle brawl for votes.

Obama met with groups of liberal and more conservative Democrats in the White House to try to assemble a winning coalition.

"To maintain a strong presidency, we need to pass the bill," Obama told the liberals, according to Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who attended the meeting.

"He made a very pointed, very realistic case about how this is an opportunity that won’t come around for a long time."

The heightened presidential pressure came on a day when Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said a dozen centrist Democrats weren’t willing to swallow Senate language that they say provides federal funding for abortion.

"We’re not going to vote for the bill with that language in there," Stupak, who leads a faction of anti-abortion Democrats who have voted for health reform, told ABC yesterday.

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FOXNews

 Obama is pushing Healthcare reform regardless of what the American people say

President Obama urged Congress to schedule a vote on health care reform in the "next few weeks," declaring Wednesday that it’s "time to make a decision" on the package, the product of a yearlong debate.

The president described the bipartisan summit held last week in Washington as the last leg of the health care reform debate. He said all arguments have been exhausted and that Congress owes the American people a final "up-or-down" vote.

"Every argument has been made," he said. "Everything there is to say about health care has been said and just about everybody has said it. So now’s the time to make a decision about how to finally reform health care so that it works, not just for the insurance companies, but for America’s families and America’s businesses."

The president, who is pressing forward with health care reform despite a nationwide clamor to address jobs creation — and despite the upset election of Republican Scott Brown to U.S. Senate in January — stressed that he is not concerned about the risky politics of pushing ahead. Though Democrats are planning to use a controversial tactic known as reconciliation to pass the bill in the Senate with a 51-vote majority, the president said that passing health care reform is "right," even if it has electoral consequences.

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Reuters

 Obama is ready to push it through

President Barack Obama began a final push for healthcare reform on Wednesday, urging Congress to vote on the plan in the next few weeks even if it means passing the measure with a narrow Democratic majority and no Republican support.

Although much uncertainty remains on the path to passage of the legislation, Obama opposed Republican calls to throw out broad bills passed by the House of Representatives and Senate last year and begin again with a more step-by-step approach.

Americans are waiting for the administration to lead, Obama said in remarks at the White House backing a muscle tactic known as "reconciliation" as a way of overcoming rock-solid Republican opposition.

Republicans dismissed Obama’s comments and said Democrats risked paying a price in mid-term congressional elections in November. "Every election in America this fall will be a referendum on this issue," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said.

Wall Street shrugged off Obama’s statement.

"It doesn’t really seem like there’s any change here. Basically, what it was was a call to action," said Steve Shubitz, a healthcare analyst at Edward Jones. "There really wasn’t much new in there, meaning nothing incrementally more damaging to the health insurance companies," he said.

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By Jake Tapper, ABC News

 Obama is ready to Rahm It through

White House officials tell ABC News that in his remarks tomorrow President Obama will indicate a willingness to work with Republicans on some issue to get a health care reform bill passed but will say that if it is necessary, Democrats will use the controversial reconciliation rules requiring only 51 Senate votes to pass the "fix" to the Senate bill.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been awaiting the president’s remarks direction on how health care reform will proceed.

In his remarks, scheduled to be at the White House, the president will paint a picture of what he will say will happen without a health care reform bill – skyrocketing premiums, everyone at the mercy of the insurance industry as recently seen with the 39% premium increases proposed by Anthem Blue Cross in California.

He will note that the “fixed” bill will include the proposal for a new "Health Insurance Rate Authority" to set guidelines for reasonable rate increases. If proposed premium increases are not justifiable per those Health Insurance Rate Authority guidelines, the Health and Human Services Secretary or state regulators could block them.

The president will outline the plan to pass the bill, including having the House of Representatives pass the Democratic Senate health care reform legislation as well as a second bill containing various “fixes.”

He will call for an up or down vote, as has happened in the past, and though he won’t use the word reconciliation, he’ll make it clear that if they’re not given an up or down vote, Democrats will use the reconciliation rules.

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BY MATTHEW CONTINETTI, Weekly Standard

Obama’s big push is coming 

Expect an announcement from President Obama tomorrow, March 3, that outlines the steps Democrats plan to take to enact health care reform via the parliamentary tactic called reconciliation. The lynchpin is the House, where Nancy Pelosi needs 216 votes to pass the Senate bill. She says she’ll have them. The AP talked to 10 Democrats who (anonymously) say they "have not ruled out switching their ‘no’ votes to ‘yes’" this time around. What’s unknown is how many Yes votes will switch to No votes because of the Senate’s expansive abortion language, among other things. In Pelosi’s February 28 interview with ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas, the speaker seemed cautious, probably because the final legislative deal is still being worked out behind closed doors.

If the House is able to pass the December 24 Senate bill unchanged, then the Senate’s job will be to pass a series of "fixes" through reconciliation, which requires only a majority vote. So Harry Reid can afford to lose nine members of his caucus, because Joe Biden will break any tie. And nine votes seems like enough of a cushion for Reid to pass the bill.

Democrats truly believe they are better off politically by passing health care reform. Of course, ideology plays a role here, as well. Most Democrats want to see universal health insurance in the United States and believe there is something morally wrong with a system that does not have universality. For most Democrats, cost was always a subsidiary issue. The larger imperative was insuring the uninsured. That is why Warren Buffett’s concerns won’t stop them from trying to pass this bill:

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