White House in Hiding, Senators Say Obama Doesn't Have the Votes to Pass Reform

August 17, 2009 (LPAC)—The White House and Nancy "Marie Antoinette" Pelosi were in hiding from the cameras on Sunday, while more than 4 hours of TV "talking heads" shows addressed nothing but health care, and demonstrated that Obama's Nazi health care policy is becoming more and more hated. The TV talk shows, from Fox Sunday, to ABC This Week, to Meet the Press, were total brawls that revealed that the votes are not there to pass the health plan in either the Senate or the House. Among the major revelations indicating that Obama is doomed were that:

(1) the public option is "not essential" — HHS Secretary Sibelius;

(2) "there are not enough votes in the U.S. Senate for the public option. There never have been," and for the President to pursue this is a "wasted effort" — Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), a member of the "Gang of Six" bipartisan negotiators in the Senate Finance Committee;

(3) there is no September 15th deal promised by Sen. Max Baucus to Obama to produce a Senate Finance Committee bill. Instead, the Committee "will be ready when we are ready," pending answers from the Congressional Budget Office — Sen. Kent Conrad;

(4) there will be no "mandatory end of life counseling" included in any bill that passes, according to Sen. Conrad, and Secretary Sibelius made a similar announcement that end of life counseling is "probably off the table" now due to the "horrific" opposition;

(5) IMAC and NICE are major targets of the Republicans who oppose the existing plans, but both TV moderators interrupted the Senators when they mentioned the names of these bodies. Instead, the moderators only wanted to use the term, "death panels."

Specifically, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) went after the end of life counseling as intolerable, and also cited NICE as the model for "rationing," and the reason that he recently told reporters that the "Democrats' health plan will kill Americans." When the moderator goaded him, "Is that reasonable discourse?" Coburn replied, "Absolutely ... let's look at the NICE system." That led fellow guest Tom Daschle to cut him off in a frenzy.

Sen. Shelby repeatedly accused the White House of advocating rationing; a video was shown of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), another member of the bipartisan "Gang of Six" negotiating the Senate bill, has been at several town meetings in Iowa, where he is saying that we "should not have counseling on the end of life ... we should not have a government program that determines you're going to pull the plug on Grandma." And Sen. Orin Hatch, who has co-sponsored health bills with Kennedy, Waxman, and Dodd, said he will not negotiate with the White House until the "government option" is removed completely, and went after the "IMAC" board by name, directly noting that this rationing board would be appointed only by the President.

More and more people are saying that the health plan is doomed. A.B. Stoddard from The Hill reported that in a conversation with a "leading" Blue Dog Democrat, he revealed that they "are not going to be able to pass" a bill in the House, because the Blue Dogs "are peeling off" from support. Polls show that opposition to the health care is about 7 percentage points above support; Sen. Shelby said that the Town Hall protests are having a major effect on how the Congress will vote.