For the last several days, I have been very despondent. Allergies, unemployment, lack of sleep and the passage of the health care bill have all had me down. I even wrote a post yesterday, asking if there was a point to continuing the good fight. After all, with the passage of health care reform on Sunday and the likely passage of the reconciliation portion of the bill this week or next, our debt and health care failings will become worse, and never, ever recover.

However, I have been inspired again, for three reasons. The first is we have a few honest, brilliant Members of Congress who can keep the torch lit. Secondly, President Obama has severely overplayed his hand, and Republicans have a chance to take advantage. Thirdly, Republicans are already taking advantage of a Democratic Party overplay.

First, I want to applaud Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), he of the brilliant maneuvers. (H/T to Hot Air.) In short, Coburn is challenging Democrats to support a change to the reconciliation bill to take Viagra away from sex offenders. While it probably won't work- as Ezra Klein pointed out- if a few Democrats fail to hold the line, than the entire bill becomes one under normal procedure, and would require a 60-vote margin, as well as a renewed House vote. You can see Coburn's other amendments here, including a bureaucratic cap-and-trade proposal. (H/T to Connie Hair of Human Events.) 

I'm not sure why a doomed effort by Coburn has lifted my spirits so- perhaps it's because he is a true conservative (he voted against war funding in 2005 because it was not paid for, and tried to nix an Oklahoman guardrail in the stimulus because it wasn't paid for, among scores of other stimulus projects, for two examples), and if he isn't giving up, neither am I.

The second thing that has lifted my spirits is President Obama's overplay of the benefits for children in ObamaCare. According to the Associated Press:

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday.

However, if a child is accepted for coverage, or is already covered, the insurer cannot exclude payment for treating a particular illness, as sometimes happens now. For example, if a child has asthma, the insurance company cannot write a policy that excludes that condition from coverage. The new safeguard will be in place later this year.

Full protection for children would not come until 2014, said Kate Cyrul, a spokeswoman for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, another panel that authored the legislation. That's the same year when insurance companies could no longer deny coverage to any person on account of health problems.

Obama's public statements have conveyed the impression that the new protections for kids were more sweeping and straightforward.

"This is a patient's bill of rights on steroids," the president said Friday at George Mason University in Virginia. "Starting this year, thousands of uninsured Americans with pre-existing conditions will be able to purchase health insurance, some for the very first time. Starting this year, insurance companies will be banned forever from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions."

And Saturday, addressing House Democrats as they approached a make-or-break vote on the bill, Obama said, "This year ... parents who are worried about getting coverage for their children with pre-existing conditions now are assured that insurance companies have to give them coverage — this year."

Fortunately for our president, he and his administration aren't going to let a little thing like lying/manipulating the public to get their support (and the support of their Members of Congress) stop them:

Late Tuesday, the administration said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would try to resolve the situation by issuing new regulations. The Obama administration interprets the law to mean that kids can't be denied coverage, as the president has said repeatedly.

"To ensure that there is no ambiguity on this point, the secretary of HHS is preparing to issue regulations next month making it clear that the term 'pre-existing exclusion' applies to both a child's access to a plan and his or her benefits once he or she is in the plan for all plans newly sold in this country six months from today," HHS spokesman Nick Papas said.

The coverage problem could mainly affect parents who purchase their own coverage for the family, as many self-employed people have to do. Families covered through employer plans typically do not have to worry about being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

Parents whose kids are turned down by an insurer would still have a fallback under the law, even without Sebelius' fix. They could seek coverage through state high-risk insurance pools slated for a major infusion of federal funds.

The high-risk pools are intended to serve as a backstop until 2014, when insurers no longer would be able to deny coverage to those in frail health. That same year, new insurance markets would open for business, and the government would begin to provide tax credits to help millions of Americans pay premiums.

If this wasn't so pathetic, it would be laughable. (Actually, it's still laughable.) After all this talk, maneuvering, buying of votes, etc. Democrats still can't get it right.

A second mess-up by the Democratic leadership has me shaking my head in despair at their selfishness; chuckling at their stupidity; and thanking the Republican leadership for stepping up to the plate all at the same time. According to a press release from the office of Rep. John Carter (R-TX):

In what will likely be recorded as the greatest political hypocrisy in American history, President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have exempted the entire Administration along with House and Senate leadership and committee staff members from participation in their new federal healthcare gulags, while forcing rank-and-file House and Senate staff out of the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP) and into the restricted federal health insurance pools, along with the rest of working Americans.

“This is such an incredible affront to every principle of equality in this country that it demands an immediate apology to the nation by the President,” says House Republican Conference Secretary John Carter.  “That should be followed by a straight up-and-down vote in the House and Senate on a bill requiring every Member and staff in both Houses and the Administration be included in this new monstrosity, with no exceptions for leadership, committee staff, the President’s cabinet, or the President.  If they think this crap is good enough for Joe the Plumber, then it should be good enough for Barack Obama, Rahm Emmanuel, and Tim Geithner.”

HR 3590, signed into law by President Obama earlier today, removes House and Senate Members and their official staff from FEHBP, forcing them and the rest of the country into the new federal exchanges. However, the bill was amended by Reid in the Senate to exclude all leadership and committee staff, who along with the President, Vice-President, Cabinet Members, thousands of Obama Administration staff, and an unknown number of Czars, would be allowed to remain in the superior FEHBP program.

Carter, himself a member of the House Republican leadership with staffers that would be included in the waiver, says the law should be applied equally to all, or none. 

“Either every Member of Congress and the Administration and their staff at every level should move to the federal exchanges, or no American anywhere should be forced to do so. Senator Reid’s actions speak much louder than his words on what this bill was really about,” says Carter.

Kudos to Carter for stepping up to the plate. Senator Grassley (R-IA) did the same thing last December, and is doing so again, on the Senate side of things. Even if the amendment fails, which is likely, Republicans can take this to the campaign trail, and use it to the same advantage Democrats did in 2006, showing how corruption under Democrats is not only bad- as it was under Republicans- but it causes huge, budget-busting bills that will ruin our nation's health care, and put us under so much debt our great-grandchildren will never get out from under it.

Between these two mess-ups by Democrats; the unpopularity of the majority party in general; and the excellent batch of candidates Republicans have running for various seats against Democratic incumbents...why, conservatives might just take the House and the Senate. It's just about our only chance to turn back this health care bill.