CBS’s Schieffer: Getting healthcare votes “may take waterboarding”
Before I get to Schieffer, here’s the latest whip count from FireDogLake.com…
This means the best case scenario at this point has Pelosi with 204 votes, which means she has to peel 12 votes from the “no” side to get to the magic 216.
Moving on, CBS’s Bob Schieffer said this morning on The Early Show it “may take waterboarding” for Democrats to get the votes they need for Obamacare…
Read more on this story at Media Research Center. Transcript…
Early Show co-host Erica Hill: … White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was on your show yesterday saying he believes this is going to pass. No real surprise there that he would say that, yet the top vote counter, Democratic vote counter in the House, says “look we still don’t have the votes.” Is the WH overly optimistic at this point?
Schieffer: Well, Jim Clyburn, the Democrat who said that they don’t have the votes yet, I take him at his word. I don’t know any independent vote counter who thinks that they have the votes now. Now Speaker Pelosi, and Robert Gibbs, David Axelrod from the WH are all saying by the end of the week they will have the votes. I think that’s going to be a tall fence to climb because they are really going to have to twist some arms. I mean it might take more than arm-twisting with some of the Democrats who voted against this the first time around. It may take waterboarding or something of that nature, but they, they seem confident that they can do that. I think we’re just going to have to wait and see because Erica, these Democrats don’t know yet how much this bill is going to cost, they don’t know exactly who’s going to pay the taxes – there is no question some taxes are going up on this. And until they get a clearer outline of exactly what’s in this bill, I just don’t think you can say whether or not they’re going to be able to get these votes. We’ll find out later in the week, but right now I just don’t think you can say.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
The budget projection on this health care reform bill is filled with gimmicks and voodoo economics. Any business that handled their books this way would be jailed for running a ponzi scheme.
The 10 years projected deficit cost of anything passed through reconcilliation CANNOT be over a trillion dollars so what kind of shell games do they play?
1) Steal half a trillion dollars from Medicaid and claim that somehow doesn’t count toward cost for “the plan”.
2)Start taxing us and cutting Medicare benefits immediately but only paying out health care benefits for six years of their ten years of projected cost.
They only pay out health benefits benefits for six of the first ten years they tax us, but it still comes out to a trillion dollar deficit over ten years. The Democratic leadership is corrupting the legislative process with backroom deals and adding rules like the infamous “Slaughter” rule that somehow passes the Senate health bill in the House without congress ever needing to vote on it prior to the president signing it. They are using 500 billion dollars from the Medicaid trust fund and using it to make it look like this isn’t creating a deficit re benefits by 500 billion dollars add t in and the actual projected government deficit cost of this program is 1.5 trillion dollars over six years. Another four years at the same annual deficit rate would project another trillion dollars to the ten year cost projection. So the REAL total deficit of running this program at CBO projected costs would be about 250 billion dollars per year. And you should expect those annual costs to balloon over next ten years.
Besides the budget financial hardships that this health care reform bill would bring on future generations; I also object to the following four provisions:
1) The plan steals half a trillion dollars from the people who paid into the Medicaid fund.
2) Mandates payment of monthly health contract premiums to government or face fines and imprisonment.
3) Places tax increases on the private plans that are not part of the government exchange.
4) Government funding of abortion.
The US health care system is already the best in the world. Even without medical insurance this lady in Ohio with leukemia is getting better care than peoples of Canada or England receive from their nationally subsidized health system. Health care reform needs to be done in a fiscally responsible and an honest way. I hope and I pray that the Blue Dog Democrats vote their creed of fiscal responsibility.
Sincerely,
Paul Usher Sr.
Bob Schieffer is a one of the last of his kind.
He is a journalist who seems to understand what objectivity means.
I could not tell you his political orientation because he is so careful to keep his biases out of his reporting.
yor bro ken