Update: The New York Times is reporting:

“In a surprise setback for Democratic leaders, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, said on Sunday that he would vote against the health care legislation in its current form.”

And on the issue of abortion, the New York Times was equally shocked by Senator Nelson:

“On a separate issue, Mr. Reid tried over the weekend to concoct a compromise on abortion that would induce Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, to vote for the bill. Mr. Nelson opposes abortion. Any provision that satisfies him risks alienating supporters of abortion rights.”

Meanwhile, this just in from the Huffington Post, Senator Lieberman told Senator Reid to his face this morning that he will vote against the Reid vapor deal:

“Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) informed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in a face-to-face meeting on Sunday that he will vote against a health care bill that includes a public option or a provision that would expand Medicare, a Democrat Senate aide tells the Huffington Post.

The two Senators had a discussion in Reid’s office shortly after Lieberman appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday morning. The Connecticut Independent discussed with Reid some of his concerns about the legislation, elaborating on issues he had raised during the show. According to the source, who was briefed on the exchange, Lieberman punctuated the discussion by telling the majority leader directly that he would vote against the bill if the Medicare buy-in and public option provisions remained in it.”

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Everyone in the country closely following the ObamaCare saga have been waiting for Senator Nelson (D-NE) to give us a sense of where he is on the bill since his abortion restriction amendment failed last week.

Yesterday, Senator Nelson — a long time pro-lifer — said:

“I can’t support cloture [ending the filibuster] on the next round,”

and that adds a second large monkey wrench in the Senate ObamaCare gears.

Monkey-wrench number one is the public option.

Monkey-wrench number two is Nelson’s statement above.

Monkey-wrench number three is any number of things that could rise to the level of a monkey-wrench, but are still in the small household pliers category. (The drug re-importation issue seems to be growing out of the pliers stage and into the monkey-wrench category.)

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Senator Carper (D-DE) has put a hold on Senator Dorgan’s (D-ND) drug re-importation amendment, who in turn, has objected to the Senate moving on any other health care amendments, until his pending drug re-importation amendment is voted on.

Got that? It’s a Dem on Dem cage match.

The Republicans, meanwhile, offered to stay in over the weekend and are now wishing they had not.

NOTE TO SENATOR MCCONNELL: If Senator Reid ever wants to let the Senators go home for the weekend before the cloture vote on the ObamaCare bill, agree (please).

Ultimately there will be a cloture vote on the Dorgan amendment, and this is where it gets very interesting.

No one knows where Senators are going to be on the vote.

If the yes votes exceed 51, which by all accounts they will, then the amendment cannot be tabled.

If the yes votes do not exceed 60 votes, then cloture is not agreed to. Then the amendment just sits there, burning time on the Senate floor, blocking any other action.

If the yes votes exceed 60 votes, then the bill is amended — and PhRma, the drug industry trade group freaks out, and the deal that they made with the White House to stop re-importation is in shreds. What PhRma does then is an open question. How can they pull the provision out of the bill? Or, do they oppose the bill and spend their millions to kill it? In general, it is grinding and nashing of teeth time for PhRma if Senator Dorgan gets more than 60 votes.

Given the tens of millions in ads that the drug industry has spent in support of the ObamaCare and it’s donations to the White House political arm — how do you think the Republicans are going to vote?

Do you think the Republicans are angry?

Well, now this is something. The New York Times is actually reporting the Dems still do not have 60 votes, even after Senator Reid’s much trumpeted vapor deal by the MSM (mainstream media):

“Democrats do not dispute that they still have not nailed down the 60 votes that will be needed to approve the health care measure.”

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ObamaCare is a political failure.

The polling data has confirmed it — repeatedly, but recently, the already bad polls have taken a radical drop. You see the average of many, many polls put together by Pollster.com and it is frightening that the Democrats are still desperately attempting to pass something Americans do not want.

ObamaCare’s political failure will lead to its legislative failure.

The only question is when. ObamaCare is a dog that won’t hunt. It won’t even get off the porch.

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And all the kings horses, and all the kings men, couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again…OK, we aren’t there, yet.

But the left is starting to flex its muscles and are beginning to be annoyed, and really concerned about all the compromises that have been made thus far.

The pro-abortion forces know that there is a good chance the bill will not go to conference, where the leadership can change it at will. The first thing that would go would be the abortion restrictions — but having a House-Senate conference is not a certainty. The fastest way to the President’s desk, is to send the Senate bill directly to the House for an up or down vote – if it passes.

As you, dear reader know, I do not think the bill will make it past the Senate floor, but many on both sides disagree — pessimistic opponents and rose-colored-glasses-wearing-proponents. I am mentioning the “ping-pong” strategy of skipping conference because the pro-abortion forces cannot take the risk that Senator Nelson’s demands make it into the bill and the bill goes to the House, without going to (as they see it) the cleansing conference.

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It does not feel like it, but we are winning the war against ObamaCare.

You may feel like the political system is broken and the Democrats are not listening to the voters. You feel that way because it is true, the Democrats are not listening. But that does not mean the bill will not die — because it turns out that the two Independent Senators are listening.

Clearly, the Democratic Senate leadership and the White House put so much pressure on the so-called moderate Senators to win this one vote to proceed to the bill, they created a political mirage that the bill’s chances are strong. But they are not. The bill is very brittle, and when it implodes, it will shatter.

As the bill stands right now, the Democrats cannot pass it. They cannot get to 60 votes on the vote to end the filibuster of the bill.

If they try to take the public option out, Senator Sanders and others (Burris, Brown and Franken) are threatening to vote against ending the filibuster. If they keep the public option in, then Senator Lieberman has threatened to vote against ending the filibuster. Either way — public option in or out — the bill dies. And Senator Sanders is not going to agree to any co-oped-trigger-opt-out compromise on the public option.

Is it any surprise that the two Independent Senators have put the Senate in this position? They are listening to the public, and are playing a role that no single Democratic Senator has the courage to play — you know, listen to your voters.

Turns out the moderates like Senators Lincoln, Landrieu and Nelson are now viewed by their voters as servants of Senator Reid and the White House. They destroyed all their work to try and get their voters to see them as something other than liberal Democrats who will just spend and tax and spend. This was the highest price Senator Reid paid to win the vote to proceed to the bill: he has forced the so-called moderate Senators look like lap-dogs.

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One might look at the latest PPP polling data that shows Roy Blunt down by one point to Robin Carnahan and think “oooh, Roy’s not looking so good”.  But a quick peek beneath the results shows otherwise.

Back in January, when PPP first surveyed Missouri voters about a potential Blunt/Carnahan race, the numbers came out 45/44 Carnahan over Blunt.  Now?  The latest shows Carnahan up 43/42 over Blunt.  Of course this is well within the MOE of 3.6%.  But consider the environment that exists today in Missouri.  The “League of Conservation Voters” has been conducting an extensive ad campaign criticizing Rep. Blunt’s stand against  “cap-and-trade” legislation.  Blunt has made his opposition to cap-and-trade well-known, pointing out the huge utility bill increases that such a bill would foist upon Missourians and the rest of the country.  But despite this effort by the Carnahan-supporting group, Blunt’s numbers have barely budged.

It appears that the negative opinion of Barack Obama’s policies, the Democrat-controlled Congress and the general economic conditions have also impacted the polling data.  According to the PPP numbers, Blunt leads Carnahan 44-32% with independent voters.  As PPP points out, this is a very similar situation to what occurred in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections.  PPP’s numbers also show strong disapproval for Barack Obama’s performance (-9 pts) and a 21-point disapproval gap for PelosiObamaReidCare.

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For those attempting to figure out what is in the Senate ObamaCare bill, you are in the company of 99 U.S. Senators who have not seen the bill. At least that is what today’s New York Times is reporting:

“frustration has been growing among some lawmakers over the delay, especially as they are asked repeated questions about a bill they have not yet seen.

“I don’t think the bill text is being shown to anybody,” Mr. [Senator] Nelson said last week.”

According to CNN: “In fact, no one has seen the Senate bill.”

They a have a phrase out West for this — all hat, no cattle.

I call it a vapor bill — all hype, no bill.

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Scalpel!

Senator Reid’s very qualified and really one of the best press guys in the city, announced yesterday that Senator Reid has filed the paperwork so the he will be able to proceed to the cloture motion on the motion to proceed next week.

This means that if Senator Reid gets 60 votes, he can bring the House bill up before the Senate.

If he does not get 60 votes, no bill comes before the U.S. Senate. Or Senator Reid may do what he did on the Doc fix — the unpaid for $250 billion Medicare spending bill — bring it up so it can fail — and then go back to the backroom to negotiate. Pretty clear and simple, yes?

For more information about what the future for ObamaCare will be, here is today’s video interview with Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) about his views of the Senate health care bill. Pay attention to the Senator’s quote “it’ll never get here.”

Then, turn off the sound, watch the interviewer and the Senator’s body language. What do you see?

Like wolves on a fresh killed deer, the liberals keep tearing up Democrats over Representative Stupak’s amendment, which forces pro-abortion Dems to vote for pro-life protections for the innocents.

This has sites like FireDogLake completely bent:

“Is there anyone who did not see this coming, besides the over hundred Democrats in the House who call themselves pro-choice? Ben Nelson (D-NE) is now demanding the Senate also include the Stupak amendment language. Did anyone really think the Senate’s conservative Democrats would let any part of the House bill be to the right of the Senate? If Nelson gets his way (and when hasn’t Nelson gotten his way this year?), so much for “don’t worry, Obama will fix it in conference.”

From Politico,

“Senator Nelson is strongly pro-life and was pleased the Stupak amendment passed with such strong support,” Thompson said in a statement. “He believes that no federal money—including subsidies or tax credits–should be used to buy insurance coverage for abortion. This is a very important issue to Senator Nelson and it is highly unlikely he would support a bill that doesn’t clearly prohibit federal dollars from going to abortion.”

“It is a good thing NARAL and Planned Parenthood did not put up a fight before the Stupak amendment was added to the House bill. It is always so much easier to push things to the left in the Senate. . . .

But NARAL and Planned Parenthood got rolled by Speaker Pelosi, and now pro-abortion Senators will be forced to make the same choice pro-abortion House Dems did, but this time, the NARALs and Planned Parenthoods of the world can’t just roll over and play dead, like they did for their pal the Speaker.

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From the NY Post’s “Prescriptions for Disaster” — when CBO scores the first ten years of spending, then we see the true cost of the House and Senate ObamaCare bills:

“Each bill is routinely “scored” for its 10-year costs from 2010-19. Yet this includes several years when the spending wouldn’t yet have kicked in. According to the Congressional Budget Office, fully 99.9 percent of the Pelosi bill’s costs would hit from 2013 onward. Similarly, 98.3 percent of Reid’s spending would come after 2014.

“The CBO reports that, in their true first 10 years, the House bill would cost $1.8 trillion, and the Senate bill would cost $1.7 trillion. Pelosi would raise Americans’ taxes by $1.1 trillion over that period, while Reid would hike them by $1 trillion.

And the House bill would siphon about $800 billion from Medicare to spend it elsewhere, while the Senate bill would suck out about $900 billion.”

The impact on our national debt:

“And if we discount the bills’ claims to divert hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare (which is already on the edge of insolvency), the CBO says the House bill would raise our national debt by about $650 billion in its real first decade, while the Senate bill would up it by $740 billion.

So, the bills would either sock older Americans by taking huge sums of money from Medicare — or hit future generations with huge tax hikes to cover the shortfall.”

On Friday, every Republican Senator sent U.S. Senate Majority Leader Reid a letter which said, where is the bill text?

Here is an excerpt from the letter:

“The American people and every member of Congress should be allowed to read the bill that was sent to CBO. The bill should be made available for taxpayers to read and learn how the federal government is spending their money. We are writing to request that you immediately make all materials sent to CBO publicly available on the internet.”

Senator Reid’s response was — uh, the bill “does not exist.” So, yet another Senate Vapor Bill Rises.

Majority Leader Reid’s letter to every Republican Senator makes clear that:

“Apart from my decision to include a public option from which states may opt out, no final decisions have been made — and none can be made until we get more information about how CBO would score different combinations.”

So, for all work, time, effort and Committee votes and amendments “no final decisions have been made.”

But here is the Vapor bill admission:

“…there is no bill to release publicly — it does not exist.”

We are changing the world of health care as everyone knows it, and we will not show you the bill — not because Reid does not want to, he says he wants to show it to America — but because it “does not exist.”

I confess, it makes zero sense to me.

I’ve done the math and the political calculus keeps coming back a broken equation.

In general, if the strategic political forces are aligned properly, then the tactical level concerns resolve themselves. This mathematical rule in politics (it is very close to applied chaos theory) regularly produces victory for those applying the rule.

There are oh so very many outright political violations that irrationalism – an identifiable and documented strain of ideologies, among them, fascism — can only explain the behavior of the White House and the House and Senate leadership.

The following political actions are simply not rational:

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A unified Republican Senate signed a letter to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Reid with a simple request, can the American people see the bill you sent to the Congressional Budget Office?

Here is the text of the signed letter:

On Monday, you announced that you had sent health care legislation to the Congressional Budget office (CBO). As you know, this legislation will have a profound impact on the lives of every American, including the next generation who will be forced to pay for it. Our national debt stands at nearly $12 trillion, with a deficit of $1.4 trillion. The health care bill will likely be more than 1,000 pages long and is the single most important legislation we will consider and debate this year in Congress.

With an issue this large and complex, we need full transparency at every stage in the legislative process. President Obama was elected, in part, on his promise to bring greater transparency to the workings of the federal government. The American people and every member of Congress should be allowed to read the bill that was sent to CBO. The bill should be made available for taxpayers to read and learn how the federal government is spending their money. We are writing to request that you immediately make all materials sent to CBO publicly available on the internet.

Senate staffers, the true veterans, are cynical and truly difficult to shock simply because they’ve seen it all — personal and political implosions, outrages, bad behavior and the worst motivations.

But this, this shocked even the veterans.

What is this? I call it: Vaporbill.

As you may know, in the great dot com internet bubble, vaporware was software that was sold, but that did not exist yet.

Vaporbill is a bill that has no legislative language but that is brought up before the Senate and cloture is invoked on a 100% blank bill.

I am not kidding.

One of the most powerful Senate staffers briefed a group of us on it yesterday morning. It is the next logical step to the HELP Committee’s mark-up of a bill not yet written. Why not take a bill to the Senate floor that does not exist?

Just wait till the READ-THE-BILL first crowd gets a hold of Vaporbill.

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From Bloomberg:

A survey of 4,518 likely voters by Zogby International Aug. 28-31 put Obama’s approval rating at a record-low 42 percent; it also showed he’s well liked.

“He’s got to get control of his presidency,” said John Zogby, president of Zogby International.

And the Washington Post has the following assessment for Obamacare:

With health-care reform, the administration appears to have two options, one of which would involve the support of a single Republican senator, Olympia Snowe. The other option would involve using a parliamentary tactic to circumvent the usual 60-vote minimum for ending the Senate debate and instead ram through a more limited health-care bill with a bare majority, dispensing with the support of conservative Democrats or any of the Republicans.

Note that both of these “two options” involve the U.S. Senate.

And the U.S. House? The Washington Post is essentially announcing the U.S. House will wait for the U.S. Senate on health care — meaning that the House does not want to walk the plank a la Cap and Trade, only to watch the Senate let the House twist in the wind on their vote. The other possibility is that the House Leadership does not have the votes to pass health care.

Either reality means the Senate is up next on health care.

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The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s “Affordable Health Choices Act” contains an “employer mandate,” or a legal requirement that all American businesses with 25 or more employees offer health insurance to their workers.

The penalty for failing to comply with this mandate to offer employees health insurance is a $750 fine per full time worker per year.

In 2008, employer-provided insurance policies averaged $4,704 a year for individuals and $12,680 for families, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (p. 2 here). This means employers would be able to save $4,000 per worker (or $12,000 per family) by ending their employee health benefit programs and simply paying the federal government the fine.

Source: Senate HELP Committee bill fact sheet, pp. 7-8.

Several sources are reporting today that a new name has emerged on the Republican side of the quest to replace Christopher “Kit” Bond in the U.S. Senate.  Thomas Schweich, a law school professor at St. Louis’s Washington University and an attorney with Bryan Cave, is apparently being recruited by former MO Senator John C. Danforth, former Hungary ambassador and Bush cousin Bert Walker, and former Belgium ambassador Sam Fox.

My immediate reaction to this news was “if he’s coming from Danforth, I gotta be concerned.”  While Danforth served as a Republican, he has made it a habit in recent years of stabbing Christian conservatives with pointy sticks, despite his credentials as an Episcopalian priest.  Danforth was at the head of the wave of GOP “moderates” blaming social conservatives for the ills of the GOP.  Sound familiar?  And now he’s promoting a candidate for Senate.  Tell me I shouldn’t be suspicious.

But there’s another, more significant reason to be concerned about Schweich.

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The Alaska Daily News is reporting that, according to a spokesperson for Gov. Sarah Palin:

“The governor has no intention of running for the senator’s seat in 2010. She thinks the senator is doing a great job and that’s why she’s looking forward to hosting a fundraiser for her.”

Meg Stapleton also told ADN yesterday speculation that Gov, Palin might challenge Sen. Murkowski in the 2010 GOP primary is “just something that’s been drummed up by the media.”

The Alaska Dispatch had called this correctly April 1, saying that word on the street was that Gov. Sarah Palin was planning to help Sen. Murkowski with a fundraiser.

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