ask john fund and juan williams, good to see you both. john your latest column, aptly entitled the fat lady has not sung. was really based on about a dozen democrats, who didn t like the slaughterhouse rule, now the deem and pass has been thrown out the window, effective, what, three hours, four hours ago? in your mind, does that change the count? i think that the democrats did themselves a favor by getting rid of deem and pass and now they ll have a direct up-or-down vote in the senate bill and i think it will help them pass it. passage is likely, but not certain. but, they paid an awful political price for this. you know, the democrats, you a few days ago got a poll from the service employees international union, one of the top supporters saying one of the biggest problems they ve had in passing the bill is the public reacts against these processes and don t like all the special interest deals and don t like the fact they were trying to avoid a direct veenote and whene
saying we don t have the votes. yesterday, steny hoyer was asked about it, do you have the votes or not? he said the whip is responsible for counting the votes. i will defer to mr. cluburn and he said they don t have the votes yet. yet. mr. gibbs, robert, is his name said yesterday that there will be a vote sometime this week. this week, there will be a final vote on health care. there will be an up or down vote on where we are on health care, on the president s plan to reform our health care system. and i think that is that s that s what he s focused on. that s why he s talking members to gain their support. robert gibbs would not answer the question when asked is the president in support of speaker pelosi s plan possibly to use the slaughterhouse rule of not allowing the house to vote yes or no on the senate version of the bill? just on the so-called fix it bill? he would not comment because a lot of constitutional lawyers say you can t use you cannot
are not getting the number they want because apparently, the fixes bill is way more expensive than it s supposed to be. even though the c.b.o. has not given us the information yet. the democrats apparently have the information but they re not releasing it because the bill is not at the threshold that the president had said, reducing by a billion dollars. maybe that s they re just fishing around, trying to fix the bill. maybe that s why the americans who have been polled about this still are not are not too supportive of it. i mean, you ve been hearing this, it s pretty consistent but the wall street journal s latest poll came out, 48% of those surveyed called it a bad idea and 32% say it s a good idea. based on what happened yesterday with to whole big self-execution rule possibly being deem and pass. exactly. the slaughterhouse rule. i mean, this could be a real disaster for the obama administration depending on who you talk to. the process doesn t matter, acco
writes its rule. if they want to write a rule saying vote for slaughterhouse rule, that s the same as voting for healthcare, the court will say we re not going to interfere. if the people don t like it, vote the bums out of office. while i sympathize with mark and wish this could be undone, i don t think it will successful. neil: when the president dismisses this and white house doesn t make a big deal and the leadership and house and senate don t make a big deal and smart guys like you don t make a big deal of it, something s amiss. it s a big deal politically when the senate uses reconciliation. when people perceive members of congress are not reading what they re voting on or voting what they re voting on. changing the rules to get something passed, the legislation will not resonate well with them come november when a third of the i agree but there s a lot of
lishl liberals in washington, d.c. are so desperate to pass this government takeover of health care they re willing to trample the rules of the senate to do it in the form of reconciliation. and if reconciliation tramples the rules of the senate, the slaughterhouse rule insults the intelligence of the american people and tramples on the constitution of the united states of america. and it must be rejected. well that s a strange you just missed this, congressman, there was mike pence, who is a smart guy. but he s reading notes as he s giving this sort of huey long stemwinder, think if you re going to show passion, don t keep looking at your notes to know what the next line is. what do you think of him out there, railing against him and procedure and this deem to have passed approach you re taking? well first, the fact that they re talking about process and procedure instead of substance i think again, is not answering the questions that the american people have out there. ab