Or one of them, at least. Tarren Bragdon, president of the
Maine
Heritage Policy Center, has written recently of assurances he
received from Sen. Snowe about the conditions of her support for
a health care reform bill.
Or one of them, at least. Tarren Bragdon, president of the
Maine
Heritage Policy Center, has written recently of assurances he
received from Sen. Snowe about the conditions of her support for
a health care reform bill. On Townhall.com
he recounted:
While the "moderate" label is often used by the far
right to protest Senator Snowe's actions - the left is about to
learn a very important lesson from the moderate from
Maine.
It is not an act. It is not something Senator Snowe does to
get re-elected or to curry favor. She believes that there is
middle ground and she looks for it. For her, middle ground
means giving businesses the opportunity to join together and
purchase health care - regardless of state lines. It involves
tort reform, it involves ensuring folks have a skin in the
game (not "free" government health care) and it involves truly
bending the cost curve. The bottom line is that Democrats
in Congress, and this President, have failed to find the middle
ground in the health care debate. In fact, they have veered so
far off the center that they will find no sympathy -behind the scenes or not - from Senator Snowe or her other
moderate colleagues.
Then after Snowe voted in favor of a failed amendment for the
Baucus bill, she said in a
press release:
“The American people are rightly entitled to see what we
are legislating and we should not be afraid of having a better
and more complete understanding of exactly what we are doing,”
said Senator Snowe, one of six committee members who worked to
lay the foundation for bipartisan cooperation within Congress
on health care reform. “The fact is words matter and so do the
numbers. This amendment represents a common sense,
practical, pragmatic, good government approach to understanding
the totality and the collective impact of what we do. We want
to be sure that we are absolutely confident in the integrity of
the product that we are going to be voting on in the final
analysis.”
Let me translate that statement for the Democrats on the
Senate Finance Committee. You are skating on Potomac River ice
in the middle of a Snowe storm. It's not going to end well.
When she uses words like "common sense" "practical" and
"pragmatic" in the same sentence - you might want to consult
with your Senate colleagues on the Right. They learned to speak
Moderate in the previous Administration. The grimace on their
faces -followed by a Cheshire cat smile- should be translation
enough.
I guess Tarren somehow missed Snowe's longstanding relationship
with the Dems:
