America will be in a constant health-care war if ObamaCare is enacted. Passage wouldn’t end the health-care debate. Rather, it would perpetuate ObamaCare as the dominant issue for decades to come, reshape politics, create an annual funding crisis in Congress, and generate a spate of angry lawsuits. Yet few in Washington seem aware of what lies ahead.

We only have to look at Great Britain to get a glimpse of the future. The National Health Service—socialized medicine—was created in 1946 and touted as the envy of the world. It’s been a contentious issue ever since. Its cost and coverage are perennial subjects of debate. The press, especially England’s most popular newspaper, The Daily Mail, feasts on reports of long waiting periods, dirty hospitals, botched care and denied access to treatments.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi believes ObamaCare would have a more congenial fate—that it will become as popular as Social Security and Medicare with voters. She’s kidding herself.Read more at online.wsj.com

The House’s healthcare vote could be delayed until as late as Easter, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Tuesday.

Clyburn, in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, said it is possible that the House vote on healthcare reform could take place long past the vote Democratic leaders had hoped for this week.

“The chances are good, but I wouldn’t bet on it,” the third-ranking House Democrat said of whether a healthcare vote could be held by the April 4th holiday. Read more at thehill.com

March 16 (Bloomberg) — U.S. employers won’t hire enough workers this year to lower the jobless rate much below the level of 9.7 percent reached in February, three Obama administration economic officials said today.

The proportion of Americans who can’t find work is likely to “remain elevated for an extended period,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, White House budget director Peter Orszag and Christina Romer, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in a joint statement. The officials said unemployment may even rise “slightly” over the next few months as discouraged workers start job-hunting again. Read more at www.bloomberg.com

How Democrats may ‘deem’ ObamaCare into law, without voting.

Under the “reconciliation” process that began yesterday afternoon, the House is supposed to approve the Senate’s Christmas Eve bill and then use “sidecar” amendments to fix the things it doesn’t like.

So at the Speaker’s command, New York Democrat Louise Slaughter, who chairs the House Rules Committee, may insert what’s known as a “self-executing rule,” also known as a “hereby rule.” Under this amazing procedural ruse, the House would then vote only once on the reconciliation corrections, but not on the underlying Senate bill. If those reconciliation corrections pass, the self-executing rule would say that the Senate bill is presumptively approved by the House—even without a formal up-or-down vote on the actual words of the Senate bill.

We have entered a political wonderland, where the rules are whatever Democrats say they are. Read more at online.wsj.com

Broadband Plan Faces Hurdles

Federal regulators detailed a $20 billion, 10-year plan to ensure all U.S. households access to high-speed Internet service, but the proposal faces resistance from industry groups and possible questions from lawmakers over how to pay for it.

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to formally release its strategy Tuesday to bring high-speed Internet access to the seven million U.S. homes that lack it, while making existing broadband connections that serve some 100 million households at least 10 times as fast. The plan is designed to encourage more Americans to go online through new proposals like a free or low-cost national wireless broadband network.

But for the telecommunications industry and its critics, the more important aspects of the plan will have to do with how the FCC could soon propose to use its regulatory powers to generate more competition for the existing broadband networks run by big phone and cable companies. Read more at online.wsj.com