Embattled Democrats tout their opposition to Obama's agenda

'They're betting that between now and November, you're going to come down with amnesia," President Obama told a Milwaukee crowd on Monday, vilifying the Republicans who "helped devastate our middle class." But it seems as if the real case of amnesia—or maybe post-traumatic stress disorder—has struck the Democrats, who are now doing everything they can to help voters forget ObamaCare.

This is a remarkable turn of events for Mr. Obama's major domestic achievement that was also supposed to be a political winner. Facing a grim November, Democrats are now running on another quarter-baked stimulus plan and the specter of John Boehner's perpetual tan, instead of the bill they spent more than a year debating and hailed as the liberal triumph of the century. Democrats now barely mention ObamaCare on the trail—unless they're trashing it.

In Milwaukee, the President made a few desultory mentions of "health care that will be there when you get sick." And in Cleveland Wednesday, his list of the iniquities from which he saved the country included "health insurance reform that stops insurance companies from jacking up your premiums at will."

But what about all the grandiose ambitions of universal coverage? What about bending the cost curve? The parade of horribles that would occur if Congress failed to act? "Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result," as Mr. Obama put it in a speech to Congress a year ago.

The only politicians who today are finding any redeeming electoral value in ObamaCare are Republicans running on reform alternatives and the Democrats who voted against it. In South Dakota, four-term Democrat Stephanie Herseth Sandlin is running ads that tout her vote against "the trillion-dollar health-care plan." Mrs. Herseth Sandlin won in 2008 with 68% of the vote but now is in a dead heat against GOP challenger Kristi Noem.

Idaho freshman Walt Minnick says in one TV spot that "I've had to say no far more than I've said yes. I've said no to more government spending, no to President Obama's big health-care plan," because "standing up to what's wrong in Washington is right for Idaho." Pennsylvania's Jason Altmire, class of 2006, features constituents who say things like, "You saw when he voted against health care" and, "He's not afraid to stand up to the President."

A promising bit of humor slips into the nation's hostile politics

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is burnishing his standing among Republican primary voters who overwhelmingly oppose President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. The law is likely to be a central theme in the 2012 presidential race.

Pawlenty, who is not seeking a third term in the governor’s office, hasn’t announced if he will enter the GOP presidential primaries and caucuses. But on Tuesday he ordered state agencies to decline “discretionary” involvement with the federal law “unless otherwise required by law or approved by the governor’s office.” He said his office will determine whether federal funding would support state initiatives or create “new encroachments by the federal government.”

Fast forward to Iowa next year, when Pawlenty may be seeking the White House. He will be able to tell the conservative activists about his executive order that sought to limit the reach of Obama’s signature achievement. And he’ll be able to attack potential rival Romney in the same breath.

Romney, too, opposed the federal health care overhaul. But should Romney make a second run for the White House, his opponents will say Obama’s health bill is merely a national version of the health care overhaul Romney implemented as Massachusetts governor.

Democrats were quick to note the politics, too. The Democratic National Committee released a spoof of the executive order that began, “Whereas, my presidential ambitions are of paramount importance.”

The spoof concludes by saying “all state employees will work for my presidential campaign.”

Foundry: Democrats advise campaigners to drop overblown claims for Obamacare, which won't reduce the deficit or health care costs

A new messaging strategy, based on public polling results from top Democratic pollsters, suggests that congressional lawmakers should wave the white flag when discussing Obamacare in their election campaigns. The PowerPoint presentation, released in a conference call organized by Families USA, encouraged officials to “keep claims small and credible: don’t overpromise or ‘spin’ what the law delivers.”

In other words, abandon ship on claims that lawmakers made for months during the health reform debate—that the legislation would in any way reduce the nation’s deficit or lower health care costs (in fact, this was a recommendation in the presentation’s “not-to-do” list).

But wait, weren’t those the main reasons why President Barack Obama in July 2009 pressed for a fast-track passage of a massive overhaul to our health care system? At a prime-time press conference during a contentious summer when many Americans expressed uncertainty, here’s how the President justified the urgency:

“If we do not control these [health care] costs, we will not be able to control our deficit,” Obama said. “If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket.”

Well, the Obama Administration got its “reform,” and the public was left with revised projections of higher deficits. Plus, workers can expect smaller paychecks next year as many businesses plan to pass higher health care costs onto their employees.

The new findings highlight what many pollsters have been reporting for months following the passage of the new health law:

•Many don’t believe this health reform will help the economy.

•Voters are concerned about rising health care costs and believe costs will continue to rise.

•Women in particular are concerned that health law will mean less provider availability—scarcity an issue.

But that’s okay, because Obamacare proponents can use “transition” or “bridge” language to let the public know that “the health care law is not perfect,” Still, since it supposedly does “good things and helps many people,” all the liberals have to do is “improve it.”

Heritage’s newly released “Solutions for America” counters that the nation doesn’t need any more liberal “improvements.” Instead, we need to get our country back on track with a full repeal of ObamaCare along with free-market policies that promote tax equity in health insurance, fix our broken government health programs and encourage states to take the lead.

Brazen overreach of Obama forces state leaders to get tough

'The brazen nature of this administration is undermining the basic rule of law, the confidence of the public, and taking away states' authority—creating an ever stronger federal government. My role is to make clear we're not going to put up with this."

So says Bill McCollum, Florida's attorney general, now vying to be governor of the Sunshine State. It wasn't so very long ago that the job of a Republican governor was to promise lower spending, policies to encourage job growth, freedom in education, tax relief.

In the age of Obama, Republican governors and candidates are redefining their role to become defenders in chief against an overweening federal government that is siphoning away states' power and crushing them with new costs.

That's why 20 states are suing for the constitutional overthrow of ObamaCare. It's why Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal threw in with a lawsuit to kill the federal drilling moratorium. It's why Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is challenging federal immigration policies. It's why 18 governors in March signed a letter demanding the Senate protect their states against EPA climate rules.

Democratic governors, too, have felt compelled to protect their citizens. The EPA letter was signed by West Virginia's Joe Manchin and Kentucky's Steve Beshear. Oklahoma's Brad Henry is scoring the administration for its "net neutrality" policies. Montana's Brian Schweitzer and Wyoming's Dave Freudenthal both signed laws curtailing federal power over firearms.

The Daily Caller blasts Obama's anti-American policy agenda

After an initial grace period in which most Americans were willing to give a new president the benefit of the doubt, what this nation has steadily watched is a man and an administration almost exclusively governing against the will of the people. While the crux of his predecessors low approval ratings were in fighting an ‘unpopular war,’ President Obama is watching his own approval rating plunge due to an unpopular, well, everything else. His record has been so blatantly in contrast to the will of this nation, that it could very nearly be defined as anti-American.

The latest example of this can be seen in the U.S. Justice Department’s decision to fight the Arizona immigration law through the courts; a law that 59% of U.S. voters would like to see in their very own state. Similar findings demonstrate that prior to this week’s ruling, 56% opposed the decision to challenge the legality of the law in the first place.

This certainly hasn’t been the only example of the Obama administration fighting hard to usurp the voice of the people. It is almost as if White House briefings indicate the mood of the country, and the president subsequently instructs his staff to move in the opposite direction.

Observe…

•The most obvious example of this has been the force-feeding of the health care reform bill down the collective throats of a nation. With the vote looming in mid-March, the measure was opposed by likely voters by a wide margin, 54-41%. Worse, the respondents who felt the strongest toward the bill were overwhelmingly in opposition. 45% strongly opposed, compared to 26% who strongly favored the plan.

•It is the first victory touted by the Obama administration, it is the topic of his current ‘summer of recovery’ tour, and it was (and remains) a big mistake according to Americans. Just two weeks prior to signing his $787 billion stimulus bill into law, two separate polls showed citizens beginning to question the wasteful government spending plan. It was opposed 43-37%, but that didn’t stop the president and his cohorts from pursuing their economic agenda at the people’s expense. Fortunately for the unemployed, as Obama promised, the unemployment rate stayed below 8% and, er … well, never mind.

•In response to the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama issued a ban on deepwater oil drilling, a policy that nearly three quarters of Americans oppose. Because the opposition to this is so massive, the administration apparently views it as a policy more-so in need of passage, issuing two moratoriums on deepwater drilling – a move that fellow Democrat Mary Landrieu claimed could “cost more jobs than the spill itself.” Perhaps the ‘summer of recovery’ doesn’t apply to the gulf coast.

•Another result of the oil disaster has been the administration’s expressed desire to move forward on the so-called cap-and-trade legislation. The legislation, an attempt to limit the total carbon dioxide emissions allowed to be released into the environment, while also imposing a massive tax burden on the economy, is opposed by 70% of Americans.

Tennessee congressional candidate tries to block Obamacare

A Tennessee constitutional lawyer running for Congress is flying to Washington D.C. today to make an attempt at personally serving top Democrats with a class action lawsuit against President Obama’s health care bill.

Van Irion says he’s planning on doing everything he can to personally serve a complaint and motion for a preliminary injunction on President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Attorney General Eric Holder. The preliminary injunction is the first motion of its type to be filed and seeks to immediately bar the government from enforcing any aspect of the health care reform bill passed last March.

Irion is the lead attorney in the lawsuit against the recently passed Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act. It’s likely viewed as a campaign gimmick, considering the lead plaintiff in the suit is Anthony Shreeve, who is running Irion’s congressional campaign. But Irion says over 25,000 Americans have signed up as co-plaintiffs on the lawsuit.

Obamacare labyrinth; if you get lost, call your congressperson

Incomplete chart of Obamacare structure, courtesy of minority on Joint Economic Committee

Taxpayers are paying $50,000 for a report that their majority opposition to enactment of Obamacare was motivated by racism

If you think $50,000 doesn’t buy what it used to, think again. For that rough sum, a professor at UCLA has agreed to draw up a report that proves opponents of the Democrats’ health-care bill aren’t motivated by a sense of fiscal responsibility or a general distrust of back-room deals, but by race.

The kicker? Taxpayers are funding the study.

According to the study’s abstract, provided by the National Science Foundation, a government agency under the control of the executive branch: “This research project attempts to provide further evidence for this Obama-induced racialization by pinpointing the extent that health-care opinions are influenced by racial attitudes and determining Obama’s causal role in racializing public opinion about a policy that has no manifest racial content.”

David Sears, a professor of psychology at UCLA, was awarded $52,034 in January 2010 to make this case for the National Science Foundation. The tautology he sets forth in his abstract is rather complicated, so let’s break it down: The project will seek to provide more evidence that opponents to health care are irrational because their negative opinions of health care “are influenced by racial attitudes,” even though the health-care bill has nothing to do with race.

What's good for the goose...Former Senate parliamentarian says reconciliation could be used to shred Obamacare

What reconciliation giveth, reconciliation can taketh away.

Since the national health care law passed in March, many have assumed that in order to repeal it, Republicans would have to gain a 60-seat majority in the Senate (on top of winning back the House and the presidency).

But in a phone interview with TAS, Robert Dove, the former Senate parliamentarian, agreed that the major spending provisions of the health care law could be repealed through the reconciliation process with a simple 51-vote majority in the Senate.

“If you eliminated something that was going to spend money, yes, that is in the order under reconciliation,” he said, when asked if the Medicaid expansion and subsidies for the purchase of insurance could be repealed using the parliamentary tactic that Democrats employed to help get ObamaCare across the finish line.

The insurance coverage provisions, which go into full effect in 2014, are projected to cost $921 billion in the first six years alone, according to the Congressional Budget Office. This accounts for the bulk of the spending in the legislation.

However, before conservatives get too excited, Dove cautions that there are “certain caveats.” While the rules of reconciliation would allow Republicans to eliminate spending in the health care law, they could not use the procedure to eliminate the tax increases – even if the overall reconciliation bill still reduced the deficit on a net basis.

“It’s a provision by provision situation,” Dove said. “So every provision in the bill must reduce the deficit.”

The same would be true to any attempt to scale back the Medicare cuts.

“Anything that reduces the deficit is okay,” he said. “And nothing that increases the deficit is okay. It’s just that simple.”

Republicans would not be able to touch the new regulations, get rid of the insurance exchanges, or strike down the mandate through reconciliation, either. But stripping the major insurance coverage provisions could help unravel the rest of the law. Without the subsidies, the insurance exchanges would be narrow in scope and it would be harder to justify forcing lower-income Americans to purchase government-approved insurance policies.

This doesn’t get into the political dynamics, most importantly, whether Republicans would actually be willing, in the face of Democrats’ demagoguery, to use the reconciliation maneuver to eliminate subsidies. But the point is, reconciliation is one option among several others that is available to drastically scale back the health care law.