Archive for posts ‘Senate Finance Committee’
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The New York Times tells us what most of us already know: there will never be a bipartisan compromise on healthcare reform with today’s GOP.
Most Republicans have been deeply unhappy with the Democratic health care proposals so far, and Republicans on the Finance Committee were said to be bracing for two possibilities: a partisan proposal that they were going to oppose, or a bipartisan proposal that they were going to oppose.
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Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), on his totally awesome bipartisan compromise healthcare bill:
The critical question is: Do we get bipartisan support sometime before we vote on the bill? And me guess is that we will,” he said. “It could be as late as voting on the bill, I just don’t know when. But I do think a decent number of Republicans will support it.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), on that same bill:
I don’t think that’s a package that very many Republicans will support
I wonder what Baucus thinks he knows about the GOP caucus that McConnell doesn’t, especially now that Baucus has produced a bill that even Democrats on his committee can’t support because it makes so many concessions to Republicans that it no longer contains the reform that Democrats want.
Meanwhile, you have Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the chief Republican negotiator of the “bipartisan” bill (and he’s hardly been gung-ho about compromise) saying that he won’t support any bill unless Democrats cede complete control and veto power over healthcare reform legislation to the GOP. And Grassley is supposed to be the most bipartisan Republican!
Someone needs to wake Max Baucus up from his bipartisan fantasy land and write a bill that provides real healthcare reform, and if Republicans don’t want to play ball (and they don’t), then so be it.
As one top Democrat told me, the fundamental problem is that Democrats “are being asked to support a bipartisan bill that doesn’t have bipartisan support.” The compromise without the cover.
– ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, on the “compromise” healthcare reform bill released today by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT).
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