Freedom Line Blog

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s senior health care advisor said this week that Democratic leadership has settled on a procedural strategy to pass ObamaCare. 

The story was first reported by Congress Daily (which can only be accessed with a subscription).  Here’s how LifeNews.com reported it:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s top health care aide Wendell Primus admitted top Democrats have already decided on the strategy to pass the Senate’s government-run health care bill…

Primus explained that the Senate will use the controversial reconciliation strategy that will have the House approve the Senate bill and both the House and Senate okaying changes to the bill that the Senate will sign off on by preventing Republicans from filibustering.

“The trick in all of this is that the president would have to sign the Senate bill first, then the reconciliation bill second, and the reconciliation bill would trump the Senate bill,” Primus said at the National Health Policy Conference hosted by Academy Health and Health Affairs.

 “There’s a certain skill, there’s a trick, but I think we’ll get it done,” he said.

The news had The Washington Examiner’s Mark Tapscott pondering, “[W]hy call a health care summit and challenge congressional Republicans to come with their best ideas when the plan is already in place to use legislative trickery to pass Obamacare?”

Good question.  One that Tapscott himself answered very adequately by writing:

The most logical answer would seem to be that the summit is part and parcel of a White House/congressional Democratic strategy to distract attention from what is about to happen on the Hill. It’s the classic magician’s trick of distracting you with the left hand while the right hand does the “trick.”