It's midnight... do you know what your Senate is doing?

Several months ago, if I searched for "HR 3590," links would appear that would point to at least one or two sources for "The Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009." Now that appears to have been changed and everything related to HR 3590 only points to "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." Why is this important? Well... HR 3590 was the originating bill, sponsored by Charlie Rangel, that somehow morphed into the PPACA, aka Obamacare.

Origin of a revenue bill.

As required by the Constitution, all revenue generating (i.e. power to tax) legislation must originate in the House in order to be legal. On September 17, 2009, Rep. Charles Rangel introduced HR 3590 (see original 8-page bill here, as passed by the House) which was titled the "Service Members Home Ownership Tax of 2009." The bill passed unanimously in the House on October 8, 2009 and was sent to the Senate. Similar legislation was introduced to the Senate in the form of S.1728 on September 20, 2009 and promptly died and was referred to Committee.

The Transformation

Sometime between October 13, 2009 (when the bill was placed on the Senate calendar) and November 19, 2009, HR 3590 was placed on the Senate's operating table and was stripped of ALL resemblance to the original bill. On November 19, 2009, HR 3590 was reintroduced -- "as amended" -- into the Senate as the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" while still wearing the disguise as the original text. Compare HR 3590 as it was placed on the Senate calendar versus how it was presented, as amended, on November 19, 2009).

Note that the original bill, as passed in the House, was only 8-pages, however by the time it got to the Senate floor, it had grown to over 2,000 pages.

The Ruse

This is the trickery that was used by the Obama administration, and the Reid Senate, to get the PPACA started with the revenue (i.e. taxing) power without presenting it for what it was in the House. The original HR 3590 passed the house unanimously, giving the bill... under name only... the power to create taxes to generate revenue to pay for the provisions of the bill. The move by the Senate to gut the bill, in its entirety with exception to the "enacting clause," is masterful deception (see the very first page, below, of HR 3590 as presented on November 19, 2009)

This Senate version of the bill passed with a vote of 60-39 and was sent back to the House for a vote on December 24, 2009. The House finally passed the bill (see the final bill as passed) on March 21, 2010 (with Democrats firmly in control of the House), receiving zero Republican votes and losing 34 Democrat votes. So the big question should be... how does a bill go from 8-pages and unanimous support in the House, to over 2,000 pages and zero Republican support in a period of a few months? This is how the Obama government works folks... like it or not. This is how they will bend in any direction to get what they want... all for the "good of the people." [Read on past the graphic below...]

Note the three items above:
Who proposed the changes;
How they gutted the bill except for the enacting clause;
How they changed the title and the entire purpose of the bill.

Parting Shot

It might be noted that President Obama signed this bill into law on March 23, 2010... just two days after it passed the House and Senate in its final form. This is yet another violation of his promise to let all bills sit on his desk for 5 days before signing them...

"When there is a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it." (then Presidential Candidate Barack Obama, Manchester, NH, JUNE 22, 2007)