In a briefing with bloggers yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) talked about her support for Rep. Louise Slaughter’s “deem and pass” scheme to pass the Senate Democrats’ government-run health care experiment, bending the rules in an attempt to shield her fellow Democrats from directly voting for the Senate bill:

“It's more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know,” the speaker said in a roundtable discussion with bloggers Monday. “But I like it,” she said, “because people don't have to vote on the Senate bill.”

Yet four years ago, Public Citizen wrote a brief in a case in the DC Circuit Court Of Appeals against the “deem and pass” scheme, calling it unconstitutional:

Some constitutional provisions are open to interpretation. One constitutional requirement that is not ambiguous, however, is the requirement that every bill pass both houses of Congress before it can be presented to the President and become law. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 ... more

President Obama likes to boast that he runs the most transparent administration in history but whether it’s shielding union cronies, crafting health care reform in secret or stemming waste and fraud in the stimulus program you’ll find that his actions fall far short of his promises. Now that list of shortcomings includes failing to accurately maintain USAspending.gov, which tracks government spending on federal contracts. The website was conceived by then-Senator Obama and is currently maintained by his own Office of Management and Budget but an audit of its records by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) turned up several problems:

After reviewing 100 federal contracts, the GAO also found "widespread inconsistencies" in what appeared on the website and what was contained in records provided by the agencies. Auditors, for example, found discrepancies in where the work took place and the purpose of the contracts.

When he was a senator, Obama hailed the website as a ... more

Is Ohio Congressman Steve Driehaus immune to Obama’s campaign fever? Or does he just realize a vote for Obama’s government-run health care experiment is far more politically terminal?

At the exact same time President Obama is pushing his health care bill across the state in Cleveland, Dreihaus will be at a fundraiser headlined by Vice President Biden. Now that’s some political pressure!

Yet despite this White House double-whammy, Rep. Dreihaus appears unlikely to support the health care bill. He told the Cincinnati Enquirer as much today:

"I appreciate the vice president coming in. But it has no bearing whatsoever on my health care vote," Driehaus said, shrugging off attacks that he's getting from both sides of the health care debate.

Driehaus did vote in favor of the health care bill that cleared the House last year, saying he was proud to stand with his colleagues to support health care reform and calling the vote "historic."

But the bill that could come before the House ... more

For the past year, President Obama and Congressional Democrats have been ignoring the American people, 73 percent of whom want to start over on health care reform or stop their government-run health care experiment altogether. But The Financial Times notes that Obama is not only ignoring the American people; he’s ignoring experts who say that Obama’s binge spending is threatening American’s credit rating:

Moody’s Investor Service, the credit rating agency, will fire a warning shot at the US on Monday, saying that unless the country gets public finances into better shape than the Obama administration projects there would be ‘downward pressure’ on its triple A credit rating ... Standard & Poor’s warned last week the triple A status of the US was at risk unless the country adopted a credible medium-term plan to rein in fiscal spending.

With a projected record $1.6 trillion deficit this year and a $9.76 trillion ten-year deficit, you would think that an American president would ... more

Democrats seem to think so. Just look at what White House advisor David Axelrod said on "Meet The Press" this morning:

He's pretty emphatic that the American people are entitled to that up or down vote, but it's the House Democrat leadership that's opposing him. They favor a scheme to bend the rules by using a gimmick to let them off the hook and pass the Senate's government-run health care experiment while claiming they never voted for it. Learn how they plan to do it in "Hypocrisy Now!"