URGENT: Nelson caves, Reid sets 1:00 am Senate vote for EARLY Monday Morning! Take Action!

Tyranny Reigns, The People Be Damned! URGENT: Nelson caves, Reid sets 1:00 am Senate vote for EARLY Monday Morning! Take Action!

This weekend, please call your two Senators at least once before the 1 am cloture vote which will occur very late Sunday night / [or as early as 1 AM] Monday morning! December 19, 2009

Harry Reid (D-NV) finally released his "secret deal" to the public this morning [Saturday, Dec. 19]. It will serve as a substitute for the decoy that was the 2,074-page bill the Senate has been debating for the past three weeks.

Reid also claimed that he has his necessary 60-vote minimum in light of Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) caving in to accept watered-down abortion funding language and announcing his support to end debate.

Harry Reid's Manager's Amendment makes only slight cosmetic changes to this overwhelmingly unpopular legislation, as it still:

* Costs almost $1 trillion - $871 billion (and that's CBO's modest estimate not factoring in the full ten years after it goes into effect), 

* Cuts Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars,

* Raises and imposes a vast array of new taxes on the American people, Allows for federal funding of abortion,

* Retains the CLASS Act (which the Democrat Chairman of the Budget Committee has described as nothing more than a "Ponzi Scheme"),

* Massively expands Medicaid, giving special treatment to a select few states so that taxpayers in VA, AR, and OH will have to pay higher taxes to subsidize the Medicaid program of a favored few, such as NE, MA, and VT.

TAKE ACTION!

Harry Reid has filed cloture on his substitute amendment, so the CLOTURE VOTE ON THE MOTION TO END DEBATE will occur very late Sunday night (12/20/09) night/or very early [Monday] morning--thus, weekend calls are imperative! If you wait until Monday morning when the sun rises, it will be too late!

This is a CALL-ONLY alert because less than 48 hours remain before the Senate votes, so calls are needed NOW! This will be our last action alert to pressure Senators on health care, so please take a few moments this weekend to call both of your Senators' district and Capitol Hill Offices. All phone numbers can be found here.

U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121/Toll-Free (866)220-0044 Ask for your Senators!

PLEASE BE AWARE: There will NOT be a conference committee to further drag out the deliberation process on this health care bill. If the Senate musters together the necessary 60 votes to invoke cloture to proceed to final passage, this will be the last significant vote on health care your Senators will make, so this is the vote that counts.

Final passage requires only a simple majority, so NO votes on final passage are next to irrelevant. CLOTURE is the vote that matters. If it passes, Reid will then take the Senate bill to Nancy Pelosi and say, "Here is the bill, vote on it now, do not allow any amendments." This will facilitate the bill reaching the President's desk before the New Year.

THIS IS IT!

http://wbx.me/l/?p=1&u=http://www.capwiz.com/eagleforum/callalert/index.tt?alertid=14481606 Call to Action: GOP Senators plead for help in new YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtYZDFxnpvc

Ben Nelson caves on abortion, announces support for health care bill

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/19/AR2009121900797_pf.html

Big vote for FORCED HEALTHCARE INSURANCE in Senate committee TODAY!

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. enters an elevator on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2009. On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev. announced that the Finance Committee will vote next week on the health care bill. (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)

By ERICA WERNER 
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's plan to remake the nation's health care system is about to take its biggest step yet toward becoming reality.

The pivotal Senate Finance Committee was poised to approve sweeping legislation Tuesday requiring nearly all Americans to purchase insurance and ushering in a host of other changes to the nation's $2.5 trillion medical system.

Much work would lie ahead before a bill could arrive on Obama's desk, but action by the Finance Committee would mark a significant advance, capping numerous delays as Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., held marathon negotiating sessions _ ultimately unsuccessful _ aimed at producing a bipartisan bill.

Four other congressional committees acted before August to pass health legislation, so for months all eyes have been on the Finance Committee, the remaining one. It's also the panel whose moderate makeup most closely resembles the Senate as a whole. And the committee's centrist legislation is seen as the best building block for a compromise plan that could find favor on the Senate floor.

With Democrats holding a 13-10 majority on the committee the outcome of Tuesday's vote is not in doubt. The big question mark is whether moderate Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine will become the first Republican to support a health overhaul bill. The legislation that passed the other House and Senate committees did so without a single Republican vote. On Monday, Snowe still wasn't saying.

With Finance Committee passage, Obama's top domestic priority will have advanced farther than former President Bill Clinton's effort ever did. The Clinton health plan never made it through all the congressional committees with jurisdiction.

The final days before Tuesday's long-anticipated vote were rocky. After playing nice for months, the health insurance industry released a report contending that the legislation would cause hefty increases in health insurance premiums.

Democrats and their allies scrambled Monday to knock it down. "Distorted and flawed," said White House spokeswoman Linda Douglass. AARP's senior policy strategist, John Rother, called it "fundamentally dishonest."

PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm that did the industry-commissioned analysis, issued a statement late Monday acknowledging it did not look at the entirety of the legislation, only the effects of four provisions that the insurance group wanted analyzed.

The drama threatened to overshadow the vote on the 10-year, $829-billion plan that Baucus has touted as the sensible solution to America's problems of high medical costs and too many uninsured.

The bill includes consumer protections such as limits on copays and deductibles and relies on federal subsidies to help lower-income families purchase coverage. Insurance companies would have to take all comers, and people could shop for insurance within new state marketplaces called exchanges.

Medicaid would be expanded, and though employers wouldn't be required to cover their workers, they'd have to pay a penalty for each employee who sought insurance with government subsidies. The bill is paid for by cuts to Medicare providers and new taxes on insurance companies and others.

Unlike the other health care bills in Congress, Baucus' would not allow the government to sell insurance in competition with private companies, a divisive element sought by liberals.

Last-minute changes made subsidies more generous and softened the penalties for those who don't comply with a proposed new mandate for everyone to buy insurance. The latter change drew the ire of the health insurance industry, which said that without a strong and enforceable requirement not enough people would get insured, and premiums would jump for everyone else.

The industry report was timed just ahead of the vote on Baucus' bill but the industry was already looking ahead to negotiations on a final package to bring to the Senate floor.

Once the Finance Committee has acted, the dealmaking can begin in earnest with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., working with White House staff, Baucus and others to blend the Finance bill with a more liberal version passed by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

A major question mark is whether Reid will include some version of a so-called public plan in the merged bill. Across the Capitol, House Democratic leaders are working to finalize their bill, which does contain a public plan, and floor action is expected in both chambers in coming weeks. If passed, the legislation would then go to a conference committee to reconcile differences.

___

Associated Press writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.

(Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

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