The White House has apparently drawn the line in the sand, with this message to the GOP: Filibuster healthcare reform and we’ll (the Democrats) proceed ahead without you and do this on our own through “reconciliation”.

That obviously raises the stakes as the Dems are basically daring the Republicans to try and block any healthcare reform.

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said that no decision has been made on how to proceed, pending the outcome of the summit, but he did add that President Obama’s proposal is “designed to offer maximum flexibility to ensure that we can get an up or down vote if the opposition decides  to take the extraordinary step of filibustering health reform.”

That folks is codespeak for the Democraps moving on their own.

Speaking of the proposal, here’s some of the details, courtesy of The Plum Line:

• As expected, the plan has no public option — but this does not preclude a reconciliation vote on the public option later.
• The proposal boosts the threshold for the “Cadillac” tax on the most expensive health plans from $23,000 for a family plan to $27,500. That’s actually a better deal than some labor officials were expecting, though some House Dems will still be angry that the tax is being included at all.
• The proposal also preserves the Senate bill’s state-based exchanges, and does not have a national exchange, as the House bill did.
• However, House Dems will be cheered by the fact that Obama’s compromise closes the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” coverage gap.
• Also, the bill nixes Ben Nelson’s Nebraska deal and boosts Federal financing for Medicaid expansion in all states.
• And finally, as expected, Obama’s proposal creates a Federal panel to monitor and block exorbitant rate hikes and other unfair practices by the insurance industry.

Pfeiffer further stated that the proposal in question was not an agreement between the House and Senate, but is “the President’s bill”.

So if I understand this correctly, the Democrats, including Obama, are telling the Republicans to either accept this proposal or else, with the else being reconciliation.

Assuming this is the case, then this is yet another “dog-and-pony” show, but with a twist. This is supposed to be on television, so I am betting that the Dems are betting that the GOP will not say no to this proposal in front of a potentially large TV viewing audience.

But what the Republicans have been doing and has been noted on the Internet and in news bits on cable TV can easily be done on television, as well.

In essence, this is that “trap” meeting that had been rumored for this summit. The Dems have the condescending mindset that the GOP and the American public doesn’t have a clue in terms of healthcare reform and that they know more.

I am of the hope that when this summit is televised on Thursday, the GOP puts their foot down and expose this proposal for what it really is: a derivative of old healthcare reform that the Democrats have tried to cram down our throats.

Thursday will be an interesting day indeed, and I hope that those of you who read the Republican Temple can find some time in your day to watch the summit. This will be your chance to watch the Dems in action.

This is the ultimate game of “Chicken”; someone will blink inevitably.

By the way, if you want to see the White House proposal, click here.

As had been expected, President-elect Barack Obama finally completed his propaganda communications team with the addition of three individuals on Saturday, the biggest name of the trio being Robert Gibbs as White House press secretary; Gibbs worked for Obama’s Senate campaign in 2004 and was communications director while he was in the Senate.

Obama added two others this weekend, as well – Ellen Moran and Dan Pfeiffer; Moran was appointed as director of communications at the White House; her main job responsibility is to pour the Obama Koolaid get Obama’s message out.  She is director of Emily’s List, an organization that backs female candidates  who support women’s abortion rights; she also has worked for the AFL-CIO.  Pfeiffer is communications director of Obama’s presidential transitional team; he also helped manage the press operation during the Obama campaign.  Obama’s obligatory statement on the appointments is below:

“These individuals will fill essential roles, and bring a breadth and depth of experience that can help our administration advance prosperity and security for the American people. This dedicated and impressive group of public servants includes longtime advisors and a talented new addition to our team, and together we will work to serve our country and meet the challenges of this defining moment in history.”

Four words for you, Barack: If you say so.

We already know that the Barack Obama campaign has much deeper financial pockets than the John McCain campaign; what a lot of people do not know is how this came to pass.  One little hint is the mysterious credit card donations that seem to be accepted by the Obama people, without any vetting process, according to Matthew Mosk of the Washington Post.  Specifically, Obama’s campaign is allowing donors to use the virtually untraceable “pre-paid credit cards” which could be used to evade donation limits and to possibly mask a donor’s identity.

With all of these credit card donations in the loop, the campaign has chosen not to use simple security measures that are designed to weed out potentially illegal or anonymous contributions; Obama’s team has stated that its extensive review has ensured that the campaign has *wink wink* refunded any improper donations.  Campaign lawyers have said that the problem with the “pre-paid” cards is that it is very difficult to tell whether foreign nationals, donors who have exceeded the limits, government contractors or even individuals who are barred from giving to a federal campaign from making contributions.

As expected, the suits at the Obama headquarters said yesterday that their “back-end review” (whatever the hell that is) has carefully scrubbed contributions – including gift cards – to prevent illegal monies from landing in the Obama campaign account.  As expected, Team Obama lawyer Robert Bauer replied to this,

“I’m pretty sure if I took my error rate and matched it against any other campaign or comparable nonprofit, you’d find we’re doing very well. I have not seen the McCain compliance staff ascending to heaven on a cloud.”

This disclosure from the Obama campaign stemmed initially from a response to questions that came from The Washington Post about the case of one Mary T. Biskup, a retired insurance manager from Missouri; she mysteriously turned up on Obama’s FEC reports as having made $174,800 in donations to the Obama campaign.  Federal guidelines limit donations to a $2,300 limit.  Biskup, who had scores of Obama donations attributed to her, said in an interview that she has never contributed to the Obama campaign; in addition, she added that her credit card was never charged with any transactions – which tells you that someone or a group used her name and made the donations with another card.

When the campaign was asked whether they took any steps to match a donor’s name to the credit card that was being used, the campaign replied in an email (not surprisingly),

“Name-matching is not a standard check conducted or made available in the credit card processing industry.  We believe Visa and MasterCard do not even have the ability to do this.  Instead, the campaign does a rigorous comprehensive analysis of online contributions on the back end of the transaction to determine whether a contribution is legitimate.”

Juan Proano, whose firm handled the online contributions for the John Edwards and John Kerry presidential campaigns, said that it is possible to require donors’ names and addresses to match those that are on their credit card accounts; however, Proano also said that some campaigns – including Obama’s presumably – are reluctant to impose that extra layer of security for the transactions.  Then there is the finger-pointing as expected.

According to Obama communications director Dan Pfeiffer, no organization can fully insulate itself from these issues.  He goes on to accuse the McCain campaign of accepting contributions from such donors as ‘A for You’, ‘Adorable Manabat’, ‘The Gun Shop’, Jesus II’ and hundreds of anonymous donors – none of which that have been proven by the Obama campaign.  But R. Rebecca Donatelli, who handles all online contributions for the McCain campaign, said that security measures are standard for all fundraising efforts throughout the campaign; she also added that she was “flabbergasted” upon learning that the Obama campaign accepts prepaid cards.

There have been internal discussions within the FEC about how to ensure that donors do in fact use their own credit cards, with election lawyer Brett Kappel stating that the FEC has never fully addressed the issue on how to ensure that donors use their own credit cards.  Which is unfortunate; what all of this does is provide yet another reason for some type of federal financing reform that addresses the issue of donation policy during federal primaries and elections.  The Obama campaign isn’t stupid as they have somehow found a way to accept monetary donations illegally – at least illegally in my opinion.  But then again, the warning shot was fired when Obama made the pledge to accept public financing of his campaign then reneged on that promise.  That basically gave the Obama campaign carte blanche in finding ways to get campaign monies illegally, which is unfortunate.