Gearing up for tomorrow’s expected Obamacare decision, here’s a chart showing the rightward drift of the Supreme Court justices over the years.
The Obama administration faced skeptical questioning from a US Supreme Court dominated by conservatives on Tuesday during a tense two-hour showdown over a sweeping healthcare law that has divided Americans.
Today’s graphic takes you inside the hearings giving you all the details on who is involved and the layout of the hearing.
LIVE BLOG: SCOTUS hearing on Affordable Health Care Act
LATEST: High stakes for Obama with healthcare on the line
Compare usage of ‘Obamacare’ vs ‘Affordable Care Act’ in the congressional record.
Fighting to Control the Meaning of ‘Obamacare’
On Monday, the Supreme Court will begin three days of arguments over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. The act is often called “Obamacare,” primarily by Republicans, as a term of disdain. Democrats have tried to limit the term’s use to reshape perceptions, but that has been a tough sell. Grant Barrett, a vice president for the American Dialect Society, says it is almost impossible to persuade people to discontinue the use of a political word. “It’s an invitation to have your heart broken. You forbid it, and they start writing it on the bathroom stalls.” Now Democrats seem to be embracing the term, launching a Twitter campaign that seeks to build positive associations for it.
A Brief History of Senate Reconciliation Votes
As Democrats move forward to pass health care reform attention has focused on a key piece of Senate rules known as budget reconciliation. This post takes Senate vote records covering 13 key reconciliation votes from 1990 to 2007 to show how senators in both parties voted—and how sitting senators voted in the past—on a variety of reconciliation bills.
The noxious smell of bullsh#t still clouds the entire health care debate, so we’re still looking for an infographic that will finally make sense of the Obamacare bill. We’ve already seen informative flowcharts and online calculators—but these have been both ugly and a bit too simplified. Time for something new.
You can see more on Obama at Influence Explorer.
