Posted on 10/13/2009 11:26:45 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine said Tuesday that she'd support a sweeping Senate Finance Committee bill overhauling the U.S. health-care industry, giving Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., a sought-after Republican vote on President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.
In highly anticipated comments on the $829 billion, 10-year bill, Snowe said the bill wasn't all she wanted.
"Far from it," she told fellow senators during what is likely to be the committee's last work session on Baucus's bill. "But when history calls, history calls, and I happen to think that the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of Congress to demonstrate its capacity to solve the monumental issues of our time."
Baucus kicked off the committee meeting Tuesday morning, saying "now is the time to get this done," after the committee's longest bill-writing session in more than 22 years. The panel is expected to vote its final approval or rejection of the bill before the day's end.
The legislation needs 12 votes to clear the 23-member committee. If it passes, it would mark a major milestone on the road to overhauling the $2.4 trillion U.S. health-care industry. The Finance Committee's is the last of five congressional bills to be voted on. Both the Senate and House would need to pass bills for Obama to sign.
The committee's early debate reflected deep partisan divisions.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the bill grows government, puts in place the biggest expansion of Medicaid since the federal program's creation, and saddles individuals with mandates to buy insurance.
"I wish I felt better about the substance of the bill," said Grassley, the panel's top Republican.
Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., was blunter. He said the measure "adds insult to injury" by hitting people with penalties if they don't buy health insurance.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
I can’t, not if I want to stay out of prison.
Key? HAHAHAHA....
Only in the minds of leftists.
if she wants a front-row seat to history calling, just go ahead and pass this thing and see what happens
Isn’t there a way to make her a non-key republican?
i had to tun off the t.v. I CANT STAND GIBBY, He has gotten more and more full of himself...he thinks he is a comedian now....Could we just go right to 2012!!!
I’d rather a democrat had her seat.
It would make no difference in the way the seat voted,
and the left couldn’t use her as a “bi-partisan” foil.
What is she voting FOR? How can anyone vote on a bill that they have not read?
For all the good it does us, the perverts, liars and thieves would do us all a favor if they sent their pet dogs to do their job! The dogs wouldn’t even have to be alive to do a better job.
The RATs will now be able to call their socialist health care program a bipartisan bill. Thanks for stabbing us in the back Snowe. Not that you give a damn.
Filthy Manx. Someone take away her broom.
There.
“Read”?! What they’re voting on out of the committee has not even been written. There is no legislative language.
No doubt she is serving her voters. No doubt about that at all. They will be pleased. Nothing but a cesspool of communists in Maine as far as I can tell.
You have a point. Having said that, is there any way in hell anyone but a RINO or dim could unseat her?
The state-run media is trumpeting this as their greatest triumph of all time.
I no longer have any faith in our system of government; it has broken down completely. As for me working hard? Forget it; I’m going Galt. Whatever I gotta do to get by, and not one ounce of effort more. And I will hide my potatoes from the commissars, too.
Meet Senator Snowe's replacement:
(It's Rawdy, for those of you in Rio Linda.)
Just shove the potatoes up their tuchuses (sp?) when they come to collect.
Define “key”...
She’s not a “key Republican”, the only reason she pretends to be, is because she couldn’t get on the DemoPervert ticket)
What she *is*, is a slit nose, sleeps with the enemy, WHORE...Who just got PAID!
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