Senate GOP: Delay, Define and Derail Health Care Reform
For months, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has led the Republican campaign of fear-mongering "reform that that denies, delays, or rations health care." Now unable to filibuster Democratic legislation on their own, Roll Call reports that McConnell's minions are unveiling a new scorched-earth strategy to "to delay, define and derail" reform. Of course, in their latest misrepresentations of the program's benefits and costs, the GOP is merely repackaging Bill Kristol's July war cry to defeat health care reform: "kill it and start over."
As it turns out, Republican obstructionism on health care might better be described as "delay, deceive and destroy." As Roll Call summed up the GOP's latest stonewalling:
Republicans are demanding a deceleration of the process and moving to define whatever plan that emerges as a combination of Medicare cuts, tax increases, higher insurance premiums and rising overall costs...
The GOP will argue that no bill that relies on tax or fee increases can be considered deficit-neutral. Additionally, they will push to enlist the opposition of the all-important seniors vote -- seniors are reliable voters, particularly in midterm election years -- by continuing to flog the Medicare cuts that Republicans believe will be a part of any final bill.
To conceal the truth about their intentions to euthanize President Obama's health care initiatives, Republicans will simply lie about what they entail. Expanding the GOP's transparently false scare tactics on Medicare, South Dakota's John Thune declared, "I don't know how you can characterize anything as reform that raises premiums, raises health care costs, raises taxes and cuts Medicare for seniors."
The same Republican Party that tried to block Medicare in the 1960's and gut it in the 1990's isn't content to frighten seniors with spurious claims about mythical benefits cuts. Now, just in time for Halloween, the GOP is manufacturing new horror stories to scare the rest of the premium-paying American public:
Republicans also intend to try to personalize the issue, charging that the Democratic health care agenda will raise insurance premiums on individuals and families, while failing to lower the overall amount of money that the U.S. spends on health care.
The GOP made those arguments last week about the Finance package, even though the nonpartisan CBO predicted the bill would reduce the deficit and lower the cost curve, even as it extends coverage to millions of uninsured Americans. However, the bill is deficit-neutral in part because it raises revenue from taxes and fees on the medical industry and gold-plated health care insurance plans.
But if there is any lingering doubt about the Republicans' intentions to block health care reform at all costs, there shouldn't be. After all, they told us so.
Republicans in both chambers haven't been shy in regurgitating Bill Kristol's "kill it, and start over" talking point. At a September North Carolina town hall hosted by Senator Richard Burr (the same Richard Burr who today warned Democrats that "they're going to have to hold every one of them [votes] in the United States Senate to make it through this"), John McCain declared, "It's time we started back at the beginning." For his part, Mitch McConnell warned of "massive rationing" and:
...called for Congress "to step back, start over and think about incremental changes" to the health care system and warned against Democrats using procedural maneuvers to ram through their version without Republican support.
In August, McCain's Arizona colleague John Kyl said, "I don't think a single Republican in the Senate" would support any of the health care bills, adding, "Let's start over." On September 12, John Cornyn (R-TX) faithfully reproduced the sound bite, arguing, "It's time we take government-run health care off the table and start over on a common-sense, bipartisan health care reform plan." Two days earlier, House Minority Leader John Boehner predictably made the same point:
"It's really about the president pushing the reset button. There's a way to start this process over, and I think that's really what the American people want. Let's start over."
Needless to say, "starting over" isn't about crafting a superior health care bill for the American people, but ensuring in 2009 as in 1994 that none emerges at all. Republicans are deathly afraid that a victory for President Obama would earn his party the thanks of a grateful public and guarantee Democratic majorities for the foreseeable future. In a nutshell, the GOP is worried not that Obama's health care reforms might fail, but that they might succeed.
For his part, Mitch McConnell in a revealing moment of honesty admitted as much last month:
"Winning is stopping and starting over and getting it right...The definition of winning is to stop and start over."
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