History of HC Legislative Process

The legislative process began with closed door negotiations. Both the Senate and House bills were written by democrats and special interests without the presence of republicans. The method was 180 degrees opposed to a process described by Obama over the past few years.


11/9/2009 - The House of Representatives vote 220 to 215 to pass the legislation and send it on to the Senate. One republican supported the bill, 39 democrats opposed it.

12/24/2009 - On Christmas Eve while Americans prepared to celebrate the holiday, the Senate largely ignores the House bill and passes their version on a straight 60-39 party line vote, . In order to pass the legislation, the votes of several senators were "bought" with the addition of special language beneficial to their state.

1/15/2010 - Realizing the likelihood of a loss in the Massachusetts Senate race, the White House begins to describe a plan to pass the Senate version using reconciliation, which would only require 51 votes to succeed.

1/19/2010 - Scott Brown, running as the 41st vote against health care legislation wins the Massachusetts Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy, the number one proponent of national health care.

2/25/2010 - President Obama stages a "bipartisan" health care summit and listens to republican ideas on how a bipartisan bill could be developed. Republican unify around the principle that current bills were too flawed and starting over was the best way forward.

3/3/2010 - The White House presents a new health care bill strategy they claim includes republican ideas, such as fraud investigation, medical malpractice reform, increasing medicaid rates to doctors, and health savings accounts. The move is seen as providing wavering democrats the explanation they are voting for a "bipartisan" bill.


3/15/2010 - Democrat wip count indicate they do not have enough House votes to pass the Senate version. All they need is a simple majority.

3/16/2010 - All recent polling indicate the American people do not support of the pending legislation by a 48% to 36% margin. Only 23% strongly favor the plan while 46% strongly oppose it.

3/17/2010 - Democrats suggest they will not directly vote on the Senate bill, but instead vote on a package of changes that will "deem" the Senate bill as passed. The move is designed to give deniability to representatives so they do not have to directly vote the Senate bill up or down.

3/18/2010 - The "bill" has not yet been presented to the House of Representatives. Neither has CBO scoring, so the cost of the plan is unknown.

3/21/2010 - The House will vote on a package of changes to the Senate bill, which will "deem" the Senate as passed (without a direct vote).

Does this sound like democracy in action, or more like lemmings jumping off a cliff. Even when the democrats succeed in forcing through their legislation, the constitutionality of the law will be questioned. Can they require Americans to purchase health insurance? No! Can they legislate clauses in a bill dictating that it cannot be repealed? No! Can they pass a bill without explicitly passing it in the House and Senate? No! So after a year of work nothing is settled, nor will it be in the next few months.