July 24th, 2009, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today condemned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Energy and Commerce committee chairman Henry Waxman for “agreeing to bypass the Energy and Commerce committee if members of their own caucus do not cave into dictatorial demands to bring the socialized medicine bill to the floor.”
According to Reuters, Waxman said “we are going to have to look at perhaps bypassing the committee” if no agreement could be reached with at least seven Blue Dog Democrats on the committee that have held up the legislation because of its high price tag, which will cost more than $1.5 trillion according to Kaiser Health News.
Those seven House Democrats signed a Blue Dog Democrat coalition letter against proposed government-run socialized medicine legislation that stated, “We do not support health care reform that is not deficit neutral.”
“Nancy Pelosi has gone completely insane,” said Wilson. “Democrats in the House should be concerned that the Botox has seeped completely into her brain. Like her forehead, the brain has stopped moving.”
Wilson said that circumventing normal procedure will cost her critical votes on the floor of the House. “Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman are cramming a bill through that virtually no one has seen nor read, all the while ignoring the legitimate concerns of a key segment of their caucus.”
“And to what end? To ram ObamaCare down the throats of the American people by the arbitrary August deadline. Even if Pelosi and Waxman bypass Energy and Commerce, get it to the floor for next week and get it passed by week’s end just to claim victory, it will be nothing more than a Pyrrhic victory,” Wilson declared.
Currently, there are 52 members of the Blue Dog Democrats in the House of Representatives, more than enough votes to defeat the proposal should they vote with the 178 member House Republican caucus.
Markup in the Energy and Commerce committee is expected to continue into the weekend. Yesterday, a markup session of the House Energy and Commerce committee was canceled because of opposition to the legislation by Blue Dog Democrats on the committee. And the committee also canceled a markup session on Tuesday for the same reason.
The committee had been expected to consider the proposal by the Obama Administration that, according to Politico, would “empower an outside body, like the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, to make binding recommendation for cost cuts in government-run health care programs.”
House Democrats have claimed that their proposal will cut the growth of Medicare spending by $500 billion over ten years. At Wednesday night’s news conference, Barack Obama elaborated on his plans to cut Medicare to pay for his overall plan by allowing an “independent group of doctors and medical experts” to determine how to cut the program tens of millions of seniors now depend on for medical care.
“This is the greatest demonstration of Nancy Pelosi’s weakness,” said Wilson. “This ObamaCare proposal is so bad that the Speaker of the House cannot even muster enough votes in her own party to bring the bill to the floor. And so in a hissy-fit she is simply circumventing the committee process altogether.”
“The Democrat House Leadership has lost its mind, plain and simple,” Wilson stated.
“Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman are telling the Blue Dogs that their legitimate concerns to slow things down and fully consider the astronomical costs of insuring ‘all Americans’ with government-run health care don’t matter. Why should they vote for the proposal now?” Wilson asked in conclusion.
Interview Availability: Please contact Alex Rosenwald at (703)383-0880 or at arosenwald@getliberty.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.
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