Whip Count (No. 1 in a series): Arcuri From Yes to No?

“And he doesn’t like those fixes – a tax on high-cost health insurance policies, for instance.”
Jake, this makes it sound like the fix is a tax on health plans. That isn’t the fix, thats the Senate bill as it stands. The fix is supposed to eliminate that tax.
Arcuri is uncomfortable with reconciliation because he doesn’t want to have to vote to approve the Senate bill BEFORE the fixes are done.
He would rather have the bills go through the usual conference procedure I imagine.
One alternative he might like is if the Democrats decided to use the nuclear option instead of reconciliation. That would allow the Senate to pass the House bill with a majority vote.

Hurrah for the Congressman from New York, and thank you, Jake, for starting this new “Whip Count”.
Meanwhile, ObaMobsters like Mr. Override continue to fussy-butt the mind-numbing details, ignoring the Devil that is the bill itself.
It is a terrible bill! It is broken! In the immortal words of Warren Buffett, it does not address the one thing our sterling health care system needs, which is to control “Costs, Costs, Costs”.
Kill the Bill. Start all over fresh and create a 21st Century design (flexible and empowering, like an Iphone) instead of this old-guard, government-centric bureaucra-beast.
I pray every Congressman looks afresh at the big picture of this bill — the fraud financing & the usurpation –, sees that we deserve and can create much better real reform, and has the courage to vote “NO”.

“Warren Buffet also said he would vote in favor of the senate bill versus the maintaining the status quo, as all sensible folks know the status quo is unsustainable.”
Uh, I read that interview. Buffet also recommended scrapping the current bill and starting over.

Buffet also recommended scrapping the current bill and starting over.
Posted by: Joe | Mar 3, 2010 4:24:45 PM
Yes to address cost as Carol said.
But he also said he’d vote for the senate bill versus the status quo, and the problem for many of us is a trust deficit when it comes to the GOP. We believe given their open strategy of deny, derail and make reform Obama’s waterloo, that the choice is the senate bill or the status quo, which is unsustainable.

Show me one of these tea partiers (the kind of people who invariably clog up the comments sections of newspaper websites, in an attempt to intimidate the kind of idiots who respect quantity over quality) who is capable of bringing out anything but talking points.
Get me one single anti-reform hater who would be capable of squaring off against, say, Ezra Klein or one of the pro-bill democrats on an intellectual level.
You will not succeed. You will only get sanctimonious, hectoring, self-righteous or religiously anti-democrat talking points from these people.
Which is why I support the bill – not so much because it is the best bill ever, but because the insane outweighs the reasonable when I look at the opposition to the bill.
“Government takeover” this, “death panels” that, CAPS LOCK everywhere and moronic portmanteaus. Rejecting that kind of inanity isn’t “elitism”, it’s *meritocracy*.
Most of the anti-bill zealots are about as persuasive as the “Bushitler” crowd who had hated on Bush since 2000 and tried to depict the invasion of Iraq as some sort of Fourth Reich nightmare.
Just grow up. The proponents of the bill have made a good case for its concept, its design resembles the republican offers from 1994 and much of the opposition cannot be seen to be in good faith. The democrats love their country as much as you do.