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Obama Healthcare Bill Will Have No Floor Vote in House or Senate Before Recess

July 31, 2009 (LPAC)—With the U.S. House set to recess Friday, neither the House nor the Senate has a healthcare bill to take to the floor. In the Senate, which recesses Aug. 6, Majority Leader Harry Reid is no longer promising that the Senate Finance Committee will complete a bill before the break. And all around Washington, the euthanasia issue first raised by American statesman Lyndon LaRouche has become pervasive, creating the climate for defeat of Obama's Nazi-modelled bill, while Obama's approval ratings tank.

To proceed with "mark up," Energy and Commerce Chair Waxman promised the "Blue Dog" budget-hawk Democrats that there would be no floor vote until after the August recess. Waxman also agreed to an additional $100 billion in cuts in the bill's cost—cuts which infuriated the Progressive Democrats—including shifting Medicaid costs onto bankrupt states. Meanwhile, Republicans Mike Rogers (Michigan) and Phil Gingrey (Georgia) hit the legislation's euthanasia weak flank, and succeeded in adding two amendments which attack the use of "cost effectiveness research" to "ration" or "deny" care (Rogers' amendment). Gingrey's amendment prohibits "the use of Federally funded clinical comparative effectiveness research data ... to make coverage determinations for medical treatments, services, or items under title XVIII on the basis of cost." Both amendments were passed by voice votes, which had to include Democrats.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid has reversed himself, and is no longer promising that the Finance Committee will finish work on the Obama healthcare bill before the Aug. 6 recess. Today, a morning "negotiating session" between the three Republican and three Democratic negotiators did not happen, and no further meetings are scheduled in the daily talks that have been going on for weeks. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), one of the GOP negotiators, said, "We're trying to do some really crazy stuff on a really short time frame. This is a train wreck." On Tuesday, Reid was asked if the Committee would report out a bill before Aug. 6. His one word answer was "Yes." Today Reid said, "We need 60 votes to get a bill passed. I am not going to jam the HELP bill or the Finance bill on anyone."

In his weekly press conference today, House Minority Leader John Boehner said Obama's bill "[P]uts a government czar in charge of personal medical decisions that only patients and their doctors ought to be making.... It also says that, after five years, every employer-sponsored health-care benefit has to be approved by the Department of Labor and the new health choices czar to make sure that it meets Federal standards." Boehner continued, "They expect the states to put up tens — tens and tens of billion dollars more. This is not — I don't — this is not the direction the American people, and certainly not the direction the governors, want."


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