Scott Brown fumes over health plan

Boston Herald ^ | 2/23/10 | Jay Fitzgerald

[raccoonradio]

Sen. Scott Brown yesterday warned the Obama administration against using the “nuclear option” of ramming through Congress a revised $1 trillion health-care bill outlined yesterday by the White House.

The administration unveiled what’s already being called “Obamacare II” - a mix of already approved House and Senate health-care legislation aimed at expanding coverage for 31 million Americans.

Obama’s plan also includes caps on excessive insurance-premium increases, similar to measures Gov. Deval Patrick proposed two weeks ago in Massachusetts.

A spokesman for Brown, whose dramatic Senate victory last month halted Capitol Hill momentum for health-care reform, said Democrats better not try to use a reconciliation strategy to pass the bill with a simple Senate majority.

Brown vowed during his campaign that he would be the crucial “41st vote” to kill reform legislation under the Senate’s supermajority-vote rules.

“If the Democrats try to ram their health-care bill through Congress using reconciliation, they are sending a dangerous signal to the American people that they will stop at nothing to raise our taxes, increase premiums and slash Medicare,” said Brown spokesman Colin Reed in a statement. “Using the nuclear option damages the concept of representative leadership and represents more of the politics-as-usual that voters have repeatedly rejected.”

While Brown’s office didn’t specifically reject Obama’s latest bill, there was no doubt Brown views the proposal as similar to earlier health-care plans backed by Democrats, even though he reached across the aisle to support a major jobs bill yesterday.

The administration faces an uphill bid to win the bill’s passage in Congress, where many Democrats were scared away from backing reform after Brown’s victory.

A spokesman for the White House said the plan is an “opening bid” for a planned bipartisan summit on Thursday.

In a statement, Patrick, whose office dodged questions about whether Obama lifted the premium-cap idea from his Democratic ally in Massachusetts, praised the president’s legislation and vowed to work for health-care reform.

“President Obama clearly recognizes health-care expansion must include cost-control initiatives to help working families and businesses that are drowning in higher premiums,” said Patrick, who was in Washington yesterday.

[Norseman]

>>I smell another Arlen Specter<<

Then you’d better get the nettie pot off the shelf. Your sinuses are plugged solid.

[Norseman]

The brunt of my idea is that it puts the onus on the Democrats in Congress to make the next sensible move. We’re a center-right country with a far-left Congressional leadership.

Announcing to the world that we (Republicans) won’t do business with the current leadership, but would with sensible leadership that reflects more of a Blue Dog mentality will give us the out for doing nothing from now to November.

We’re going to do just that anyway, and announcing it as a policy will put the whole matter on the table. We go into November with either a) the current mess and win in a landslide since we put the ball in their court and they refused to play, or b) a Congress that’s started to legislate center-right.

Frankly, I’d betting on option a), but then we might just get another 2 years of gridlock and I’m not sure we can stay on this course another 2 years. Things are falling apart in a hurry financially and it IS possible to spend your way into oblivion.