MADNESS, CONT'D - AT 7:45 P.M. ET:  Nancy Pelosi lives in Pelosiville, a small town cut off from the adult world.  It's a wonderful place - munchkins everywhere, tofu dinners, every second person a Berkeley graduate.  The town anthem, "No to Bush and His Lackey, Cheney," is a toe-tapper that has gone to the top of the local charts. 

Now Nancy, Pelosiville's leading citizen, makes her latest move.  Despite growing public opposition to the Democratic health-care plan, Pelosi has taken action to make the plan even more liberal, going back on her word to more moderate Democrats.  From CBS News:

When House leadership brings a final health care bill to the full House floor, it may be more liberal than moderate House Democrats expected, according to reports.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is planning to include in the bill a tax on wealthy Americans, as well as a more robust government-run health insurance plan (or "public option"), abandoning the compromises leaders in a key committee worked out with the moderate Blue Dog Democrats, according to Roll Call.

COMMENT:  It gets worse.  House Dems have rejected a proposal to make the final bill available for 72 hours before a vote.  In other words, the American people, and Congress itself, will be denied a reasonable reading period.  What are they trying to hide?

In the Senate, a proposal to wait for a Congressional Budget Office report on the actual cost of the plan before going further was also turned down by the Democratic majority.  Even Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, the most liberal Republican in the Senate, objected to this outrage.  What, she asked, can happen in the few weeks it will take to get the figures?  Why shouldn't Congress know the full cost?

The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is pushing and pushing and pushing.  What can stop this runaway train?  Late reports say that it is moderate Democrats who are balking, and that Nancy may not, ultimately, have the 218 votes needed to pass her plan in the House, which would kill the whole thing.

September 23, 2009