AFF Sentinel Vol.7#7

After over a year of voter opposition at townhalls, rallies, Tea Parties, in polls and communications to Congress, the final fate of Healthenstein rests in the hands of voters this week.

This is the final push, the chance to make an unprecedented year of astonishingly successful protest beat the health care monster Healthenstein. Below, we'll give you some tools to make it easy.

If you are at all interested in animal agriculture, consider what this bill could do. It would put control over the entire health care system and much of the nutrition and health systems and recommendations apparatus in the hands of government, giving the anti- animal products activists in federal bureaucracies and the health & nutrition community the authority to make recommendations, set standards, set rates and re- imbursement policies carrying the force of regulation- backed law.

The constant fights animal agriculture has to keep animal protein and dairy from being de-emphasized in USDA's Food Pyramid and the attempts to cut more meat from the school lunch program, for example, would change. The balance of power would shift, as activists in government could put unfounded but widely believed disease and obesity prevention rationale into regulations. Added to that leverage, would be the tendency to use cost cutting reasons against nutrient dense, vitamin-rich but more expensive animal products.

The unsupported "cut out red meat" bias from some weight-loss nutritionists or cardiologists could, instead of being opinions from certain private practitioners, easily find their way into direct orders, prohibitions or "label frightening" schemes to the public from federal boards dictating decisions about what care will be allowed, what diet standards are to be mandated and new payment rules.

Here's where we are:

• The House must pass the exact bill the Senate passed Christmas Eve. The language allowing federal funding of abortions, the Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker Kickback, Gatoraid and other favors defined as bribes outside Washington, the taxes on health insurance, the huge scope and cost of the system - it's all in there and once the House passes it and President Obama signs it, the bill will become the law of the land.
• The reconciliation packages of "fixes' to the bill - the fixes take up another 2,300 pages which few will have read - can be taken up only after the bill is passed and signed. The House has to trust that the Senate will even take up the reconciliation bill. The House has no part in reconciliation.
• The reconciliation process is tricky and the outcome not as predictable as regular legislation. For example, the Senate parliamentarian, who rules whether certain parts of the reconciliation bill are germane to the budget process, has already indicated language like the Stupak amendment that prohibits federal abortions cannot be a part of reconciliation. That means Stupak and 5-12 other House members could well be expected to vote against the bill in the House. But, the president of the Senate, Vice President Joe Biden, can legally override the Senate parliamentarian's rulings.
• Some Senators have made a show of backing away from their sweetheart deals and asked for their removal in reconciliation. The leadership and the White House are instead figuring out ways to expand them to more states to retain votes in the Senate. Obviously, cost means nothing to them.
• The CBO, having just now completed their cost analysis of the Senate's Christmas bill, has not completed their estimates for the just-released proposed reconciliation version. So the CBO, whose cost estimates almost no one believes, will probably not have analyzed -- except preliminarily -- the 2,300- page package released hours ago, when the vote occurs. It will be voted on without being read, with no cost figures - realistic or fanciful -- attached.
• The vote will likely happen this weekend, when Congress moronically believes we won't be watching.
• Opponents must defeat this bill in the House. No one knows what will happen in the reconciliation process.

Why are some members of Congress willing to be sacrificed in the fall elections to pass this bill? Why, when even they concede the majority of Americans oppose it?

Because they are liberal politicians who believe in a cause. That cause is to force the expansion of the federal government into more and more of our lives and businesses, because they believe we are not capable, do not have the right, do not want to control our own lives.

To e-mail the Blue Dog Democrats and Swing District Democrats, click here for Hugh Hewitt's e-mail to Representative list: