Young Guns, by Rep. Paul Ryan, Rep. Eric Cantor & Rep. Kevin McCarthy: on Health Care

Paul Ryan: FactCheck: No, Medicare cost doesn't exceed national defense

• $125B on DVA and Veterans pensions
• $47B on Homeland Security
• $109B on interest on debt from past war expenditures
• $34B for defense-related expenditures under the FBI, NASA, the Energy Department, & the State Department
• National defense expenditures hence total $979B or 28% of the budget.

Eric Cantor: Trillion-dollar price tags when decision by bureaucrats

We disagree fundamentally, however, on how to fix our system. We believe the patient and her doctor should be the decision makers when it comes to health care, not a bureaucrat in the basement of the Health and Human Services building in Washington DC. Far from "bending the cost curve down," their plan had a trillion-dollar price tag.

Eric Cantor: Options without mandates: cross-state insurance & pooling

What does a health-care system that works for all Americans look like Republicans believe in providing individuals and families with more affordable options without costly mandates by expanding insurance market competition. We would allow families to buy insurance across state lines and give every individual and small business the same access to tax incentives and pooling opportunities that unions and corporations have today. We would end discrimination against Americans with preexisting conditions by creating state-based high risk pools, not by forcing everyone to pay more. And we would do something the Democrats will never do: reduce health-care costs by taking on the trial lawyers who force physicians into defensive medicine, which drives up costs for everyone.

Nancy Pelosi: OpEd: "Deem & pass" forced Obamacare past democratic process

In the House, a process called "deem and pass" was legislative tricker to enact legislation that does not have majority backing. It meant the House would pass the 2,700-page health-care bill without ever actually voting for it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it all when she said, in the final days of the debate, "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."

Public outrage and the protests of both Republican and Democratic members compelled Speaker Pelosi to back away from the "deem and pass" strategy of passing the bill without actually voting on it. The ugly health-care debacle finally came to an end with final passage of the overhaul in the House on March 21, 2010. The minority party was completely excluded from the shaping of major reform legislation.

Paul Ryan: Washington Way: closed-door deals & one-party votes

In short, the defining feature of the new Washington Way is that it strips the power of making law away from the people. This new Washington Way is designed to transfer lawmaking to a small elite group who know what is best for us. And from start to finish, the way President Obama and the Democratic majority went about supposedly fixing our health-care system has been conducted in the new Washington Way.

Paul Ryan: ObamaCare passed with no GOP support & split Democrats

In the Senate, that meant employing the "nuclear option". This process known as budget reconciliation, requires only a simple majority of 51 votes to pass a bill. It had never been used--never--to push through a $1,000,000,000,000 expansion of government and to seize control of one-sixth of the economy. In the House, a process called "deem and pass" was essentially the same thing.

The ugly health-care debacle finally came to an end with final passage of the overhaul in the House on March 21, 2010. 219 House Democrats voted for the bill, 34 opposed it. No Republican, in the House or the Senate, voted for the bill. For the first time since before the Civil War, the minority party was so completely excluded from the shaping of major reform legislation that it voted unanimously against the final bill.

Paul Ryan: For tax credits; high-risk pools; & regulatory reform

Through a combination of tax credits, high-risk pools, transparency, regulatory reform, and information technology, patient-centered reforms would foster a vibrant health-care marketplace. In stark contrast to Obamacare, my plan unapologetically seeks to apply our nation's timeless principles--our Founders' commitment to individual liberty, limited government and free enterprise--to today's challenges.

Scott Brown: MA voters took up Brown's offer as 41st vote against Obama

Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts had made passing Democratic health-care reform through the democratic process impossible. In the campaign, Brown had promised the voters of Massachusetts he would be the 41st vote in the Senate against Obamacare and they took him up on his offer. Without the sixty votes necessary for a filibuster-proof majority to pass their version of health-care reform, the majority party became desperate.

The only way left was the new Washington Way. If supporters of government health care couldn't summon the votes necessary to pass health-care reform through the democratic process, they would just bypass the democratic process.