Leave it to Planned Parenthood, NARAL and NOW to think that the Senate version of the ObamaCare bill wasn't pro-abortion "enough", but it's not hard to imagine that they would think so.

What they object to is the pro-life fiction that was written into the Senate bill by Democrat Senator Bill Nelson which uses accounting gimmicks to try and deny the government funds get used to subsidize abortion.  But in the end, it's just a shell game.  But Planned Parenthood can't even abide the fiction.  They're opposing Obama's executive order, which does nothing more than reiterate Nelson's Senate bill language.  They want it all out in the open.

Of course, as everyone who knows anything about how our system of government works, a presidential executive order doesn't stand up to a law passed by Congress.  Don't believe me?  Just ask Planned Parenthood:

"Politically, it's unfortunate that the president was put in a position to sign this executive order," Planned Parenthood's Rubiner said. "But the important thing is that substantively, it has no impact on the force of the underlying law."

Remember "Jobs, jobs, jobs"?  That's what Obama and the Democrats told us they were going to focus on a few months ago after that big upset win by Scott Brown in Massachusetts, (after he campaigned almost exclusively against ObamaCare).

Well not only have they not changed their focus to jobs, we've spent another two months mired in debating their health care takeover scheme.  And now comes a study from Americans for Tax Reform and the Beacon Hill Institute that projects ObamaCare would cost the economy around 700,000 jobs by 2019.

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, has urged
passage of the massive health reform plan moving through Congress as a
way to create up to 400,000 jobs.  Speaker Pelosi bases her claim on a
report by the Center for American Progress (CAP) in which the Center
estimates that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)
would create 250,000 to 400,000 jobs per year over 10 years.

This estimate by CAP amounts to a hurried effort to add academic
heft to the claim that national health care reform offers a collateral
benefit in the form of an economic “stimulus.” It turns out, however,
that its methodology, stripped of unsupportable claims about savings in
health care costs, shows just the opposite of what CAP intended. PPACA
is a job killer, not a job creator.

When a piece of legislation reaches over 2,700 pages, it becomes pretty likely (if not a certainty) that it will contain lots of things that most people aren't aware of.  And you can pretty well increase those odds in inverse proportion to how fast the bill's proponents are trying to push it through.  So it is with ObamaCare.

A new analysis of the massive legislation by ATR shows that it contains over nineteen tax increases.  Yes, tax increases.  Big government is not a free lunch, remember.

Of course the President and the Democrat leadership have spent all their time talking about who's going to get insurance, and how it will be a great thing for the latest hard case they hold up as a public relations prop to push the bill, but they fail to speak at any length about any hardships brought on by the increases in taxes to pay for the monstrosity, (to say nothing of lost liberties, choices, higher debt, bigger federal government, etc.).

Here's s summary of some of the taxes in the bill:

Given how much time Obama and the Democrat leadership have spent villainizing insurance and drug companies, you wouldn't expect that some of those same companies would be bankrolling the efforts to pass ObamaCare, or that Democrats would be taking their money to do just that.  OK, maybe you would believe that last part, but still...

From the Washington Examiner:

As they whip for the health care bill, Democratic leaders pack a mean one-two punch of populist rhetoric and the hefty financial backing of the drug industry.

In the heated yearlong health fight, President Obama has often accused his opponents of willful misrepresentation, even as he and his allies have endlessly repeated the biggest whopper of all — that the bill would rein in the special interests.

The Obama team regularly dismisses opponents as industry lackeys.
The Democratic National Committee blasted out e-mails this week warning
that "for every member of Congress, there are eight anti-reform
lobbyists swarming Capitol Hill" and "Congress is under attack from
insurance lobbyists."

As we get down to the wire, the list of swing votes in the upcoming House vote on the ObamaCare legislation is coming more into focus. The list below identifies the potential "swing vote" Democrats, their most recent public position, as well as how they voted on the first "House" version of the bill last November.

All Republican members have stated that they will vote against the bill. If you are represented by them, contact them and thank them.

If you are represented by one that is listed as a "no", call and thank them and offer them encouragement to stand strong - as they are having their arms twisted relentlessly by Obama, Pelosi and Democrat leadership.

If you are represented by a someone listed as a "yes" or "undecided", call and let them know that you are opposed to the bill. Let them know that you are a registered voter in their district and that you demand that they vote "NO" on ObamaCare.

If your representative is not on this list, click here to send them a message, (you can even use this link to contact all members of Congress at once).

In their effort to clear up any confusion whatsoever about where they stand on the Senate version of ObamaCare, the nation's Catholic Bishops put out a statement this past weekend that they asked to have read aloud and/or posted in their parishes which set the record straight.

They are OPPOSSED to the bill.

From the statement:

As long-time advocates of health care reform, the U.S.
Catholic bishops continue to make the moral case that genuine health
care reform must protect the life, dignity, consciences and health of
all, especially the poor and vulnerable. Health care reform should
provide access to affordable and quality health care for all, and not
advance a pro-abortion agenda in our country. Genuine health care
reform is being blocked by those who insist on reversing widely
supported policies against federal funding of abortion and plans which
include abortion, not by those working simply to preserve these
longstanding protections.

The latest from the world of ObamaCare...

House Dems want to pass ObamaCare without actually voting on it

Yes, believe it or not, it's come to this.  House Democratic leaders are working on a strategy which would allow the House to "pass" the Senate version of ObamaCare but avoid the unpleasant prospect of having to vote in favor of it on the record.  The trick would involve them voting instead for a "reconciliation" package (changes to the Senate bill) which, under the new rule adopted for this purpose, would pre-suppose passage of the underlying Senate bill which they just voted to "reconcile".

Just in case you're not keeping track at home, this makes at least three "unusual" changes to the normal legislative process that Democrats have employed to ram this bill through.  The first being not having a conference committee to iron out the differences between the House and Senate bills, (because that could then be filibustered by the no longer filibuster proof Senate); the second being to propose using reconciliation in the Senate as a way to "fix" the bill so the House would vote for it, (again, so as to avoid need more than just 51 senators), and the third now being the House trying to pass a bill they don't actually vote for.

As the clock ticks down on Obama's (latest) deadline for passage of his bid to take over 1/6th of our economy, many Democrats are worrying (and Republicans are hoping) that the vote won't happen before Congress leaves town next weekend for it's Easter break.  The recess will last longer than two weeks, and be the first time (other than Christmas) that they've had to spend an extended period of time back home in their districts since the August recess of last year.

Why does that worry them?  Because it was during last year's August recess that congressional town halls all across the country exploded with anger when constituents began to figure out what was in ObamaCare and started putting their representatives on the spot about it.  And given how razor thin the upcoming House vote on the Senate version of ObamaCare is likely to be, the last thing Obama and the Democrat leadership wants is for any of their wavering members to be "exposed" to the public again.

To make things worse, even while they're in the process of trying to rush a vote before everyone leaves town, no one has seen any legislative language for their proposed "reconciliation amendments", (ie. the "fixes" that are supposed to make wavering Democrats feel better about voting for it). 

Amazing.

If you haven't contacted your members of Congress yet, do so before it's too late.

Believe it or not, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in the course of promoting passage of the Senate version of ObamaCare, said that they need to pass the bill in order for people to really know what's in the bill.

Yes, really...

“You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other.  But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket.  Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting. 

“But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."

We're not exactly sure why the bill would need to be "passed" in order for people to "find out what is in it".  Maybe because, once it's law, people can read it...since the US Code of Laws is actually a public document?

Leave it to the always insightful Michael Barone to put things in perspective.  Case in point is his column today discussing how the Democrats have put themselves squarely in the middle of the mess they are currently in...and his take on the complaints that the reason why they can't get something done (despite their big majorities) is Republican opposition.

There's a reason it's hard to pass unpopular legislation on party-line votes. It's not the Senate rules. It's called democracy.

Exactly.  And, given the latest polls on the issue - and on the coming elections - you could take that one step further and say "public opinion".