Health Care “Swing Votes” are here! UPDATED!

After meeting with Democratic Leaders Tuesday evening, Nancy Pelosi has settled on a new strategy to ram Government Health Care down the throats of the American People.

Her new strategy appears to rely on passing a reconciliation bill along side the Senate Health Care bill in the House.  The Senate bill could not become law without the passage of the reconcilation “fix.”

From Jed Babbin and Connie Hair at Human Events…

First, it would contain the Senate-passed healthcare bill, with the Cornhusker Kickback, the Second Louisiana Purchase and every other bribe that propelled it through the Senate.

Second, it would contain a “reconciliation” bill that would make both policy amendments and purported budget fixes, making the bill palatable to even staunch abortion opponents such as Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) who promised to lead a group of a dozen abortion opponents in voting against the bill if his concerns weren’t satisfied.

Third — and this is where it gets into the “you gotta be kidding” range — it would make the passage of the first item, the Senate bill, contingent on the Senate passing the second reconciliation part.  Kinda, sort of.  And that would be based on a letter to be obtained by Pelosi with the signatures of at least 51 Senators or used car salesmen.

Both the Senate and House Parliamentarians are expected to rule of this latest strategy, and their blessing is far from assured according to the New York Times.

But Pelosi has at least one other major obstacle if she plans to use reconciliation to “fix” the abortion language in the Senate bill and appease the Stupak crowd.  At a March 2, 2010 press conference on health care, she stated that both “abortion” and “immigration” could not be addressed in a budget bill requiring only 51 votes in the Senate (she carefully avoids repeating the word “reconciliation”).  Watch the video and read the partial transcript below.

The issue of reconciliation begins around the 1:45 minute mark of the video…

Reporter’s question…

“It seems pretty clear that two of the issues that are going to be very difficult to handle procedurally, are issues that really can’t be done under reconciliation, and yet are important, abortion and immigration in particular. Can you give [us] a sense of how you plan to go about bridging the gap that is so wide in the first place. Abortion cannot be handled under reconciliation. It doesn’t seem so anyway, so how do you get [there?].”

Speaker Pelosi’s Response…

“Well, just for those of you who… we’re talking about a process where we use a simple majority to pass legislation. So, without any fancy names, a simple majority. And under… that’s a budget resolution. Under the budget resolution, you can only deal with issues that are essential to the budget. None of these policy issues are, so they won’t be dealt with in the budget. Neither of these issues is essential to the bill. This is not an immigration bill. This is not an abortion bill. It is a bill about affordable healthcare for all Americans. That is the momentum that will take us to a majority vote in the Congress.”

There you go!  According to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Reconciliation cannot be used to change abortion language.

• More on “Stupak’s Folly”

• THE SLAUGHTER SOLUTION! What a name!  Trying to pass ObamaCare without a vote in the House.

  So much for an up or down vote for the American People

UPDATE

Democrats appear to be moving forward with the “Slaughter Solution” with the help of both the House and Senate Parliamentarians.  Brian Darling of RedState explains, “Behind closed doors, the Obama Administration, House and Senate Democrat leaders are cutting a secret deal on ObamaCare [again].  They have come up with a way to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare in the House WITHOUT ANY HOUSE MEMBERS HAVING TO VOTE DIRECTLY ON THE BILL” (EMPHASIS MINE).  Brian does a great job of summarizing last nights “closed door” meeting.  The Bottom line… Democrat leaders still appear confident that they will pass ObamaCare into law.  Now, they are working behind closed doors with the Parliamentarians to make this happen.  WOW!  KEEP UP THE PRESSURE!

UPDATE:

SENATE PARLIAMENTARIAN RULES THAT OBAMA MUST SIGN BILL INTO LAW BEFORERECONCILIATION CAN MOVE FORWARD

This is huge!  More from Philip Klein at the American Spectator.  I wonder what the Democrats will try next?