Tony Perkins, FRC Washington Update:: The Senate's "centrists" should savor their holiday on the Hill. For some of them, it may be their last. With the health care bill plowing through Congress faster than the Polar Express, angry Americans may decide for some "change" of their own next November. At the moment, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is trying to beat the clock, scheduling votes at all hours of the day and night in hopes of forcing his four-reams of health care failure down the chimney before the big day. If the Majority Leader's calendar holds up, a vote on H.R. 3590 could happen on the night of Christmas Eve--even though the Senate still hasn't seen the latest version of the bill and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has yet to announce how much it will cost. There is more than a little irony that Congress will vote on the bill that funds and expands abortion to unprecedented levels on Christmas Eve. Republicans are doing their best to eat up minutes by throwing some procedural curve balls. Earlier this week, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) forced the liberals' hand by asking them to read aloud a 767-page amendment. The Senate's clerks never finished the reading relay, because the Left surrendered three hours in and pulled the measure. "If Senator Reid won't slow down this debate, we will do it for him," said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). After the leadership pulled its prized public option, the country's liberal zealots may be willing to help.
After almost a full year of debate on the issue, Americans are unhappy. The extreme Left is unhappy. Conservatives are livid. At this point, they all agree on the solution to Reid's bill: kill it. That means identifying the Senate's 60th vote and stopping it. For now, the entire weight of this historic legislation falls on the shoulders of whoever breaks rank and votes with Sen. Reid. To be sure, it will hang around that leader's neck--be it Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Blanche Lincoln, or Ben Nelson--like an electoral noose. Kimberley Strassel summed it up in an excellent Wall Street Journal op-ed, "Slowly... the Democratic health a genda is turning into a political suicide pact... So why the stubborn insistence on passing health reform? Think big. The liberal wing of the party... [is] focused beyond November 2010, to the long-term political prize. They want a health-care program that inevitably leads to a... permanent welfare state. Big government then becomes fact, and another Ronald Reagan becomes impossible. See Continental Europe." Unfortunately, rank-and-file Democrats can't see the forest for the Christmas trees. Why not help them? Call your senators over the weekend at 202-224-3121 and urge them to kill this bill.
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