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The Spectacle Blog
While Republicans have not yet unified around a broad strategy on health care, for now they seem to be coalescing around the argument that any legislation should not be rushed.
While President Obama was in Wisconsin yesterday and railed against “endless delay” in passing health care legislation, Republican lawmakers emphasized that the issue was too important to be rammed through the Congress without taking the time to get it right.
Sens. Richard Burr and Tom Coburn, who introduced a Republican alternative bill, spoke at a Thursday event on Capitol Hill organized by the Manhattan Institute. Burr explained that under the accelerated schedule, amendments to the legislation proposed by Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee this week would be due by 2 p.m. on Monday, and the process of rewriting the bill (known as “markup”) would begin on Tuesday – even though three parts the bill haven’t been finished yet.
“We have one opportunity to do this right,” Burr said. “If we fail, it will take a generation of Americans to fix those failures.”
Coburn said it was “absolutely asinine” that they wouldn’t even know the Congressional Budget Office’s assessment of the legislation’s price tag by the time they huddle in committee to work on the bill.
“A criticism of Congress right now might be, ‘Sure we want health care fixed, but we don’t want to fix it just to say you fixed it, we want you to really fix it, so take your time to do it right,'” Coburn said. “We’ll win that debate.”
In his opening statement during a public hearing on the bill, Mike Enzi, the ranking Republican on the HELP Committee, conveyed a similar sentiment.
“We shouldn’t be subject just to timetables,” Enzi said. “We should be subject to doing what’s right.”
Obama has pushed for an expedited timetable under which the House
and Senate would pass their own versions of health care
legislation next month, and work out their differences in the
fall -- allowing him to sign something by the end of the
year.
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More Blog Posts by Philip Klein
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Rebecca| 6.12.09 @ 9:15AM
I don't know about others, but I am really getting tired of getting pushed around by our President. What is the big rush? The TARP scandals are just coming to light and are now where near as intrusive in scope and time as a complete overhaul of health care. I suspect it is a rush because the longer people have to think about it, the less they'll buy it.
Is this how the President is going to do things? TV daily, flying around for town halls, sending massive emails for grass roots action? What happened to representative government? When will his followers (or fans) get tired of being so busy? This reminds me of the churches that keep everyone involved everyday of the week so that they can control them. In some circles it is called an abusive church. I think Obama is close to abusing the citizens that already worked and voted for him. It's becoming disgusting.
Andy Winford| 9.25.09 @ 12:14AM
Pushed around by our President? Is he sending your son off to war only to provide subpar healthcare for him when he gets back? We are the only industrialized nation not to have universal health care. Ironically we spend nearly twice as much per citizen and somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 million Americans are not covered.
While I disagree I can respect those who argue that on principle that the governement should not be involved. We already have socialized insurance, it's just not socialized by the government. It's socialized within collectives headed by for profit corporations who favor their bottom line over your well being. Capitalism is the greatest system in the world. The problem is it doesn't work very well when it comes to health care. People talk about "horror" stories from Canada... which are actually very few and far between. What about the horror stories in this country? How long is the waiting list for knee replacement if you have an HMO plan and you live in rural Alabama?
If you don't have health insurance and you are in a car accident providers can write anything they want on your bill and you have to pay it. Years ago when we didn't have insurance my wife hurt her knee and had to go to the ER. A 2nd doctor looked at her chart and left and they added $175 to our bill. No one explained to us why he needed to look at the chart, what his function was and how much it was going to cost. They just added the charges... and we paid it. What choice did we have? Doesn't sound like capitalism to me. Hopefully conservatives never find a way to capitalize education. If so, only the rich will be able to keep their kids out of schools that have 40 students to a teacher. For capitalism to work the masses have to be able to afford quality basic services or the masses won't be so interested in capitalism any longer. Ignoring this will to be to ignore history in places like China, Russia and pre-WW2 Germany.
pamela| 4.23.10 @ 2:04AM
I would have laughed in disbelief, “ Hoffman said in a Sunday column for the New York Post , describing a few of the most recent developments in the campaign.Download lil wayne mp3
pricila| 4.24.10 @ 9:10AM
It is a well known ruse in federal law enforcement, that if, lets say, an agent wants to see the Indy 500 and can't get tickets, he will pick a name off the FBI most wanted list, go to the brickyard on race day, go to someone in charge, and say, "Hi, I am Special Agent so and so (flash badge) and I am looking for Joe Blow, FBI Most Wanted #X, and an informant tells us he is a big car racing fan, and he might be in attendance today. I (or My partner and I) need to enter the public seating areas and take a look around, maybe ask around if anyone has seen him here today." email to fax