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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (354624)	3/20/2010 8:14:27 PM
From: KLP	2 Recommendations Respond to of 793926

More....but must reads: Live updates from Capitol Hill in the race to reform [KLP Note: Especially read Olga's comment and the comments from Rep. Paul Ryan....!] By Jon Ward - The Daily Caller 03/20/10 at 10:54 AM Breaking 7:00 P.M. – I thought the protesters were gone. Actually they had just moved to the east front of the Capitol. I’m sitting on the front steps of the Capitol. There are a few thousand protesters in front of me, who are very loud and very passionate. Rep. Todd Tiahrt, Kansas Republican, was the first lawmaker to come out and speak with a megaphone, after the crowd had been out here for a while chanting. “We’re not only going to vote no. We’re gonna vote hell no!” said Jack Kingston, Georgia Republican, told the crowd that the House Rules Committee, which is still in session on the third floor facing the crowd, was being disturbed by the crowd. You can imagine the response to that. Loud. One of the interesting things was that the crowd response to different lines from Rep. Steve King, when talking about the things they don’t like about the health care bill or big government, was ear-splitting. But when King said there will be “a reckoning in November and we’re going to have a clean sweep,” there was applause but it was light. I happened to be standing by King before he spoke to the crowd. He was approached by a 55-year old Russian immigrant named Olga Brenner, who had tears in her eyes as she told King she fears the U.S. is headed the wrong direction. I have video of her exchange with King from my phone and will get that up soon. I asked Olga why she thought the bill was bad, she said “it’s not a cliche, it really is a government takeover of health care.” “I thought I ran away from government dictatorship,” she said. “When people have freedom it’s like air, you don’t remember, you don’t think about it. But when it’s not like air you begin to—you feel it … When there is lack of it, of freedom, it’s suffocating,” she said. “I know what it is, and you won’t believe how recognizable it is. This is what I hear all my life, the same speeches, good intentions, it’s demagoguery but top-level propaganda. I’ve heard it all my life. And people live in misery.” When I asked for Olga’s last name, she hesitated, explaining that she was conditioned by living in the former Soviet Union. “I understand,” I said. She responded: “You don’t understand. You don’t understand what it is and where it is going.” BREAKING 5:42 P.M. – I walked by the Rules Committee hearing room (which is right across the hall from the House press gallery where I’ve been working out of) just as some lawmakers were walking out (earlier I said the hearing was breaking up – that was wrong). I asked Henry Waxman, the California Democrat, who the final yes votes would be. He said he should probably not answer that. I then talked to Paul Ryan, who looked exhausted. Ryan is one of the few Republican lawmakers still trying to make a case against the bill even though most people at this point are only focused on whether Democrats will have the votes to pass it. But Ryan got some of the Democrats on the Rules Committee pretty riled up today during debate. I asked him if he was frustrated that the bill looked poised to pass Sunday. “I think it’s a big, big mistake to put this into law. I mean I really do. So that’s frustrating. This is the biggest social policy in 40 years. I think it’s going to be a fiscal explosion and nightmare. I think it’s going to hurt the economy. And we could have done a better job. So yeah, that’s frustrating,” he said. “Its ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ I just think people are living in a fantasy world if they think that this can be afforded, if they don’t think that this will lead to systematic rationing of health care,” Ryan said. He mentioned that he was surprised that Democrats had managed to get this far, after looking down and out in January after the loss of Ted Kennedy’s senate seat in Massachusetts. “I think they’ve just kept their Democrats in a cocoon in Washington and they’re just pounding them with reinforcing messages, and they’re not stepping outside of this town and just looking at the big picture, and just looking at reality. And I think they’re gonna really regret doing this,” he said. And he added one shot at Blue Dog Democrats who voted against the bill in November but who have flipped to support it. “Blue Dogs don’t exist any more, as far as I’m concerned. They don’t exist anymore,” he said. “Nobody who calls themselves a Blue Dog and votes for this can ever call themselves a Blue Dog Democrat ever again.” Read more: dailycaller.com