Nancy Pelosi

A conservative military watchdog expects a tough fight in Congress if Democratic leaders move forward with a plan to try ending the ban on homosexuals serving in the U.S. military by attaching an amendment to next year's defense authorization bill.

On Wednesday an aide to Congressman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) told The Hill that both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) back the strategy of using the defense bill to attempt to change the 1993 law which strictly forbids homosexuals from serving in the military. That law has often been confused with Bill Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" directive, which was never approved by Congress...

A spokesman for National Right to Life says the latest attempt by House Democrats to obscure federal abortion funding in their healthcare bill is a "political fig leaf made out of cellophane."

As OneNewsNow reported last week, page 110 of the House healthcare bill (H.R. 3692) authorizes a new federal health insurance program or "public option" to pay for all elective abortions.

Blue Dog Congressman Brad Ellsworth (D-Indiana), an avowed pro-lifer, is sponsoring an amendment he claims would make sure no federal funds in the bill are used to provide abortions.

However, pro-life groups across the country say Ellsworth's proposal is a sham. Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Obama administration are desperately trying to undercut Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Michigan) and other pro-lifers who want to pass an amendment barring abortion funding...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has conjured up plenty of old ghosts since launching the health care fight back in July, invoking Democrats who laid the foundation for this year’s push — like Franklin Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.

In a way, those titans came up short. Pelosi owes her current place on the cusp of a historic health care vote Saturday to far more anonymous contemporaries, like New Jersey Rep. Robert Andrews and California Rep. Xavier Becerra, whom Pelosi sent out to get the votes.

The fate of the bill itself rests on the shoulders of a new generation of Democrats whose young careers will be defined, in part, by the votes they cast Saturday — votes sure to be used against many of them in 2010...

As a crowd of protesters shouted "kill the bill," House Republicans on Thursday rallied opposition against the Democrats' health care legislation, decrying the bill on the steps of Congress in a last-ditch bid to derail or at least delay the legislation heading toward a possible vote Saturday.

Thousands of protesters arrived by bus for the rally, which the GOP is calling an emergency "House Call." The event drew the conservative "tea party" activists but unlike past rallies was officially sanctioned by House Republicans.

Republicans want those who attend to track down their elected representatives in Congress and put pressure on them to think twice about voting for the more than $1 trillion health care overhaul pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi...

The new 1,990-page healthcare bill not only authorizes federal funding for elective abortions, but it also allows abortion funding in the Indian Health Service.

House Democrats have attached to the back of their healthcare bill a measure to reauthorize the Indian Health Service.

Democrats have failed to move the Indian health bill for the past three years because there were votes in the Energy and Commerce Committee to add an amendment preventing the Indian Health Service from funding abortions. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) has refused to add the Hyde Amendment abortion funding ban to the overall healthcare bill...

WASHINGTON -- After months of contentious negotiating, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi prepared to unveil a retooled health care overhaul plan intended to bridge differences among Democrats and open a history-making floor debate on extending health insurance to nearly all Americans.

Pelosi, D-Calif., wants to have the legislation on the floor next week, with a final vote before Veterans Day, Nov. 11, that would give President Barack Obama a bill to sign by year's end, numerous Democratic officials said. She planned a formal announcement of the bill Thursday in front of the Capitol.

The bill would require nearly everyone by 2013 to sign up through their employer, a government program or a new kind of purchasing pool called an exchange...

WASHINGTON – Democratic leaders in Congress scrambled Friday to round up votes for allowing the government to sell health insurance in competition with private industry as they struggled to finalize a health care bill that meets President Barack Obama's goals.

In a change in the Senate, long seen as hostile to the so-called public option, senior Democrats were considering including such a measure, officials said. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., spent Friday calling and talking with wavering Democrats to test support for different versions of the plan.

A similar process was under way in the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi was scratching for votes in favor of her preferred version of the so-called public option, even though opposition from moderates seemed to indicate that the votes weren't there...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi counted votes Thursday night and determined she could not pass a “robust public option” — the most aggressive of the three forms of a public option House Democrats have been considering as part of a national overhaul of health care.

The California Democrat's decision — coupled with a significant turn of events yesterday during a private White House meeting — points to an increasingly likely compromise for a “trigger” option for a government plan.

Administration officials have been telling POLITICO for weeks now that this is the most likely compromise because it can probably satisfy liberals — albeit only reluctantly and after many vent frustration and some even threaten to walk away from the bill...

(CNSNews.com) – When CNSNews.com asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday where the Constitution authorized Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance--a mandate included in both the House and Senate versions of the health care bill--Pelosi dismissed the question by saying: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

Pelosi's press secretary later responded to written follow-up questions from CNSNews.com by emailing CNSNews.com a press release on the “Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform,” that argues that Congress derives the authority to mandate that people purchase health insurance from its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce...

Public option — yes or no — has been at the heart of the debate on health reform all year, but Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were reminded Wednesday that the obstacles to getting a bill done are even bigger than that.

In the Senate, Reid got a taste of just how hard it will be to corral his famously fractious caucus — as a dozen Democrats joined with Republicans to vote down the so-called doc fix to Medicare physician reimbursements because it would add $247 billion to the deficit.

The vote served as a test of the majority leader’s ability to hold his caucus together for a health care vote — and in the end, he couldn’t even muster a simple majority of Democrats or persuade a single Republican to come on board; not even Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)...