Squaring the Culture

Jared Allen at TheHill.com is reporting that House Democrats have reached an agreement in which the vote on the healthcare bill will not take place until after Labor Day.

Blue Dogs and House leaders have struck a deal to guarantee that the House will not vote on a healthcare bill before August, a leading Blue Dog said on Wednesday.

In exchange for putting off a floor vote until after Labor Day, the Energy and Commerce Committee may be allowed to continue its markup of the healthcare bill this week even if an agreement has not been reached between committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and seven Energy and Commerce Blue Dogs over the content of the bill.

Asked if House leaders had told Democrats that there will be no House vote on healthcare before Friday, Blue Dog Co-Chairwoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) said, “I don’t think [leaders have] made public statements to that regard, but my understanding is that that would be part of an agreement, if they actually do move forward with an Energy and Commerce markup, that there will be no vote on the House floor until after Labor Day.”

This appears to be the result of incidents showing that the House Democratic leadership does not have the votes to pass the bill. Allen reported less than a week ago that talks between the majority leader and Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce committee had broken down:

House healthcare negotiations dissolved in acrimony on Friday, with Blue Dog Democrats saying they were “lied” to by their Democratic leaders.

In advance of a subsequent press conference called by House leadership, Blue Dog liaison Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.) said the healthcare bill should be staying in committee.

“I expect the committee process to proceed,” Cardoza said.

The seven Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee stormed out of a Friday meeting with their committee chairman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), saying Waxman had been negotiating in bad faith over a number of provisions Blue Dogs demanded be changed in the stalled healthcare bill.

“I’ve been lied to,” Blue Dog Coalition Co-Chairman Charlie Melancon (D-La.) said on Friday. “We have not had legitimate negotiations.

The story, unsurprisingly, suggests that the Democrats’ Achilles Heel is their arrogance; they think they can ram through anything they like, regardless of the will of the people. We need to remember this the next time a Democrat invokes “the will of the people” as a sound bite to support anything; they simply don’t care about the will of the people (nor, it seems, any other genuine moral imperative, for that matter) except as a convenient sound bite to win some argument.

This is not the time to relax. The President’s health care proposal would be a disaster for America, and would virtually guarantee fiscal collapse if executed in the wake of the new President’s 6-month adventure in fiscal irresponsibility, the wasting of trillions of dollars of revenue that the government has not received and cannot borrow at reasonable rates. If the President’s health care initiative fails, his ability to continue to convert the United States into Soviet Union II will have been severely hampered. Continue to call Congressmen and Senators, write letters to the editor, blog, and in all other ways expose the true danger of ObamaCare.

Hat tip to Hot Air.

UPDATE 7/29 @ 4:12 PM: Erick at RedState just sent word that the announced delay was a red herring, and that the Blue Dogs and House Democrats plan to ram the bill through the House this week. GOPUSA confirms this report. This would mean that they intend to pass the bill without most Representatives having read it in its final version. Please call your Representatives and let them know that a “yes” vote on a rush basis is unacceptable, and should be sufficient reason to oppose their re-election. Thanks.