Obama to Senate: Get off your ass

Well President Obama is getting a little tired of waiting around for a health care bill. The House has got their act together and he's waiting for the Senate to get their bill done. He's told them to get serious and do whatever they have to do to get a bill ready by the end of the week, before the August recess. Four hour work days, showing up before noon, not immediately getting soused at their office liquor cabinet, whatever it takes to get them on schedule. If not, he's threatening spankings and the possibility of the entire United States Senate being sent to their rooms without dinner.

House Democrats are moving ahead with sweeping health care legislation as President Barack Obama prods a Senate committee chairman to take faster action on a companion measure.

Moving forcefully on his top domestic priority, Obama told Sen. Max Baucus he wants legislation ready by week's end in the Finance Committee that Baucus chairs, according to numerous Democratic officials.

Reports are unclear if Sen. Baucus actually responded to the President with a churlish "Fuck you gon' do about it if we don't" while outstretching his arms and bobbing his head in an aggressive manner. What is exactly Obama's plan here? Well he hopes that by making the Senate rush he can can help avoid some of the more damaging last minute alterations and fruitless attempts to gain Republican support that will invariably happen to the bill if the Senate was given proper time. Things like removing a public option, a plan to kidnap all the uninsured and Shanghai them in Toronto, or Baucus tacking on a rider stating that insurance companies gets to take anyone with a pre-existing condition and fill their mouth in with cement so that the bill can gain the support of Senators from cement producing states.

But this could backfire, I mean have you seen how much damage the Senate can do when they are ostensibly working hard? Imagine what kind of damage they can do if they have to work in a sped-up slapdash manner. Entire chunks of the bill will be missing, words misspelled, pages from an old forestry service bill stapled in to pad out the length, in a word: chaos. Still though, who does Obama think he is? It's not like this bill has been worked on for six months and ready for three weeks, now has it? Oh, it has? Still, Baucus is an old man, it takes time to walk a bill down to Harry Reid's office. I'm sure that's the delay.