From The CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR:
In a retake recalling the film version of “Groundhog Day,” the Senate today redebated the 2010 health-care reform law – this time, in a bid to repeal it.
The measure to repeal was proposed as an amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization bill. It failed a procedural challenge on a strict, party-line vote, 47 to 51. On. Jan. 19, House Republicans voted to repeal the health care law, 245 to 189. They were joined by three Democrats.
“These are the first steps in a long road that will culminate in 2012,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R) of Texas, after today’s vote. “We will continue to expose flaws and faults in this legislation … and the courts will continue to review it.”
Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada said that he allowed the Republican amendment to come to the floor – a rare event in recent years – so that the Senate could move on to work on jobs and the economy.
…snip…
With Democrats controlling the Senate and President Obama wielding a veto pen at the White House, the prospects for outright repeal are remote. Instead, Republicans will push for votes to dismantle incrementally the most unpopular elements of the reform.
…snip…
The GOP’s next front in the bid to undercut the health-care bill is a measure, introduced Tuesday, that allows states to opt out of major provisions of the new law. These opt-outs include: mandates for individuals to buy health insurance and employers to provide it, as well as federal mandates to expand access to state Medicaid programs, and new federal requirements defining what qualifies as a health plan.“Our bill takes the fight out of Washington and puts it back in the states,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina, a cosponsor with Sen. John Barrasso (R) of Wyoming, on Tuesday.
“Medicaid expansion under Obama health care will be devastating to many states, including South Carolina,” he added. “As more states opt out, it will have the effect of repealing and replacing Obamacare.”
To date, 33 governors have written to the White House requesting flexibility in meeting these new health-care mandates.
From 44 at The Washington Post:
The Senate on Wednesday defeated a Republican-led effort to repeal the entire national health-care overhaul, with lawmakers voting strictly along party lines.
…snip…
Democrats’ unanimous opposition to the repeal came even though several vulnerable lawmakers up for re-election in 2012, including Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Jon Tester (Mont.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.), had come under pressure to support repeal.
While the full repeal measure fell short, a separate health-care amendment offered by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) sailed through the Senate with bipartisan support. The Stabenow proposal, which would repeal an unpopular tax-reporting provision of the law that opponents say overburdens small businesses, passed on an 81-to-17 vote. The House has not yet considered that proposal.
A third amendment offered by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) was defeated on a 44-to-54 vote. That amendment, which was offered shortly before Wednesday’s proposals came to the floor, was similar to Stabenow’s but would have paid for the change by ending tax breaks for oil companies.
…snip…
The Republican-majority House has already voted to repeal the law.
Earlier Wednesday, lawmakers took to the Senate floor, the TV airwaves and to a Judiciary Committee to heatedly debate the health-care law.
In one of the more contentious moments on the Senate floor, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) delivered a blistering speech accusing Republicans of offering “one more hollow, symbolic pander-to-the-masses amendment.”
“If you want to rewrite the bill, keep your promise, Republican Party, that if you want to repeal, then let’s go replace,” Mikulski said. “I want to hear their ideas for replacement. I challenge them right here, right now, today on this amendment.”
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) criticized an estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that repealing the health care law will increase the deficit by $230 billion.
“What I’m saying is, garbage in, garbage out,” McCain said.
…snip…
And amid increasing debate over the constitutionality of the health care overhaul, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) introduced a resolution on Wednesday requesting that the Supreme Court conduct an expedited review of the law.
Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first-ever hearing on the constitutionality of the health-care overhaul. Five legal experts were called to testify: Democrats called Oregon Attorney General John Kroger and former solicitors general Walter Dellinger and Charles Fried as witnesses while Republicans called Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett and attorney Michael Carvin.
…snip…
Fried, Kroger and Dellinger testified that they believed the individual mandate is constitutional.
“I come here not as a partisan for this act,” said Fried, who served as solicitor general under Ronald Reagan. “I think there are lots of problems with it. I’m not sure it’s good policy. I’m not sure it’s going to make the country any better. But I am quite sure that the health care mandate is constitutional.”
Carvin and Barnett argued otherwise. Carvin, who served in the Reagan administration as well as on George W. Bush’s legal team in the 2000 Florida recount, called the individual mandate an “abuse of the commerce power.” He added that the argument over activity versus inactivity “is not some semantic lawyer’s trick, something we came up with in response to the health care act. It’s a core principle that goes to the most basic constitutional freedoms and the limits on federal enumerated powers.”
Barnett, who argued a key commerce clause case before the Supreme Court in 2004, said that the “individual mandate is neither necessary nor proper.”
HYSTERICAL RAISINS 
What? Republicans don’t want to PAY for the reporting provision they just helped eliminate? 🙄
(I’m really disgusted to learn from the National Enquirer that John Boehner gets laid.)
Gee thanks for sharing that. Now I have to get some Comet and a wire brush and scrub my brain!
comet doesn’t work. you have to get a wire hanger and poke out your mind’s eye.
😆 oh that’s good 😆
well, the enquirer was right about john edwards, but i wonder about this story. according to the enquirer:
ruggedly handsome? they’ve lost all credibility with me. 😉
Isn’t “ruggedly” handsome code talk for not handsome? That’s what I thought given the context.
It’s a way to say someone looks nice and call take-backs in the same sentence.
not sure. maybe the enquirer describes people as though they’re writing personal ads. maybe ruggedly handsome translates to leather-like.
Flaws and faults in the legeslation? Well we all know that never happens. And of course why would this bill have faults? Why those darn Dems, it must be their fault that this legeslation is so bad.
actually, it is the dems’ fault if the bill gave the supremes and the rethugs an opening to repeal it. i’d like to think that there was some wily dem strategery at work, and this will be their way of making the rethugs look like the heartless shitheads they are in time for the 2012 election.
true, but i’m sure that the rethugs knew all along that they would not be able to stop some sort of bill going through so they made sure it had as many holes in it as possible so that they could point to “flawed legislation.”
i don’t know if the rethugs had much of a hand in crafting anything in the bill. i would imagine that every legislation is flawed in some way, so what really matters is whether it’s fixed or trashed later on.
hey nonnie! you won another kOscar. congradulations.
thanks, fotc. i wasn’t paying attention to the koscars, but trix told me in the diary rescue thread that i came in 3rd. that’s even worse than last year, when i came in 2nd.
you came in first. someone was playing a trix on you.
oops, sorry. i got mixed up. that orange gumbie thing looks like boner so i thought it was the boobie prize. you are always number first to me. 🙂
awww, thanks, fotc. those koscars are really strange looking, aren’t they? i don’t really understand the category i was in. i love jekyllnhyde’s diaries, but i have no idea how what he does is anything like what i do or the other nominees in that category. it is what it is. coming in third is fine with me.
McCain knows garbage through and through.
not only does he know garbage, but he picks it for his runningmate!
Six more weeks? Try six more months until the GOP presidential campaigns start in earnest, and more than a year after that until the election.
i couldn’t think of a title, because i waited until the last minute, so i thought of your hilarious comment yesterday, and i adapted it. i’m not proud of it. 😦
Oops! If I had known I inspired this, I’d have been nicer. Sorry!
you weren’t not nice. no apology was expected or necessary. 🙂
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Just like to say a word about my former senator Corny–why don’t you just shut the fuck up–thank you. As far as the house bozo squad goes, they should take the scriptural approach with something like a “democrat heal thyself” bill, as long as it allows demonic deals across state lines. This purity display in the house is getting old. And now they busy themeselves trying to redefine rape. I feel that since bonerman has his sexually compensating gavel, the Prez should get a veto pen about the size of a baseball bat and step out on the lawn several days a week and swing in the on deck circle to limber up. (somehow I feel he does not need to compensate)
you know what gets me, jerry? the fruitcakes on the far right are wringing their hankies over sharia law coming to america, but what’s more sharia-like than women having to prove that they were forcibly raped in order to terminate an unwanted pregnancy?
I am so friggin sick of this Republican circus. Look at that – Democrats are already trying to fix some of its less desirable parts and the obstructionist R’s, who appear to be on some kind of psychosis inducing drug, keep vowing to defeat even those. They are hateful. I stopped short of saying “I hate them.” I usually just think that. R’s are hell bent on something worse than inertia – pure stonewalling and wasting taxpayers money by their stupid behavior.
Now I have to go take a shower and gargle with Listerine to rid myself of the ick I feel over reading that stuff about Boner.
they are hateful, and i hate them. i have no problem saying that. i think it’s perfectly fine to hate them. the difference between us saying that we hate them is that we don’t follow that up with calls for violence against them. as much as i hate them, i don’t want anyone shooting them.