Why the Senate Still Matters

I've mentioned recently that I thought the Congress would be the harder chamber to get a health care bill through: the Senate is less encumbered by nuisance of elections. But others have rightly pointed out that a super majority while numerically feasible is hard to do once, let alone the two times that it will be required. True. But my main point I think, is still valid, at least to a certain extent.

Okay maybe I was wrong on this one.  Maybe I was blinded by a sense of frustration with Congress.

Right or wrong however, where the Senate matters most is its ability to stall or slow things considerably.  Even Harry Reid seems to be inadvertantly on side with this, talking about starting after the recess, or maybe next week.  Then there's Senator Lieberman who isn't onside with stopping a filibuster.  But Olympia Snowe might still side with Democrats, since she seems to be about as dependable to the GOP as a broken watch; right twice a day.  Actually in her case she sides with the right about twice a year.

But even if the Senate manages to produce it's own version - remember the House bill has been all but declared dead on arrival in the Senate - from the various versions the Senate has floating around, there's another matter to deal with still.

Reconciliation of the two versions of the bill.  That will take some time too.  And Time Is On Our Side if this thing continues to play out.  The various versions of the bill all can be picked apart and shown for what they really are - bloated, tax filled, freedom-killing, Constitutionally unsound manfiesto-driven slag heaps of bad ideas.

But here's my caveat on that.  Conservatives everywhere are busy combing over the Pelosi version of the health care bill, which to my mind is a pointless exercise.  It seems like there is a Democrat plan afoot to do a health care bill shell game.  If critical eyes can't focus on any version for long enough, and they don't even know what the final version will look like and when it will appear, how can they know that the final version won't be another Saturday night special that has a short window to critically review?  The answer is, they won't and they can't.

That doesn't mean that critical reviews of each and every version aren't important, because the bad taste in America's mouth is real, and the country  needs to be continually reminded of the pitfalls as they come to light.  But when the final version comes up for a vote in both houses - that's when the full throttle resistence to the Democrats' full-steam-ahead aproach has to happen.  It will likely come upon the country as a thief in the night.  So my point is this - be ready to mobilize quickly and effectively and with every effort possible when the time comes.