Many words but few revelations from health care summit
It wasn’t a disaster for either Republicans or Democrats. It wasn’t a total bore either. And while there were some combative moments, the two sides managed to remain largely civil.
In the end, the big White House health-care summit was basically what it was expected to be: many hours of talk that will ultimately be seen to have served as an anchor on which Democrats steadied their legislative ship while they tried to regain momentum for a push through Congress.
Nonetheless, some news and themes emerged:
President Obama has no problem with using reconciliation to force a bill through Congress
Sen. John McCain of Arizona made a poignant case for why the little-used budget maneuver should be used, casting it as an abuse of power and recalling his own actions to buck the Republican party when they were ready to jam judicial nominees down Democrats’ throats in 1995.
“There has been reconciliation, but not at the level of an issue of this magnitude and I think it could harm the future of our country and our institution, which I love a great deal, for a long, long time,” McCain said.
Obama shrugged.
“I think the American people aren’t always all that interested in procedures inside the Senate. I do think that they want a vote on how we’re going to move this forward,” he said.
In his final comments of the day, Obama argued to Republicans, and to the American people watching on TV, that he had made numerous concessions to conservative ideas, and said that Republicans should do the same and meet him halfway.
But, he said, if a deal can’t be reached “in a month’s time or a few week’s time or six weeks time … then I think we’ve got to go ahead and make some decisions, and that’s what elections are for.”
Republicans, however, pointed to reports that the White House intends to try to push a bill through Congress regardless of whether they jumped on board or not.
“What it was is, ‘We’ll invite you down, and if we don’t think we can convince you we’re ramming it through,’ rather than having a real serious debate about the issues and trying to meet in the middle. So I’m pretty discouraged,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, in an interview after the meeting.
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The Congress and the President’s health care proposals are full of gimmicks and the American People see right through it.
Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, told Newsmax.TV’s Ashley Martella that both the House and the Senate bills passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress are full of “smoke-and-mirror” regulations that will stymie hospitals and doctors’ attempts to enact cost-cutting measures.
• “This year, doctors in Medicare are going to get cut 21 percent in their fees. Everyone is trying to fix that. That’s $371 billion. What did the Democrats do — they took it out of this legislation and are moving it as a separate piece of legislation. So they have hidden $371 billion of spending right there.
• “Here is a second thing they are doing, which CBO [Congressional Budget Office] has no control over, 10 years of tax increases and Medicare cuts to pay for six years of spending. They can manipulate a score anyway they want to to make it appear as if it’s not a deficit, but if you actually take away all the smoke and mirrors, all the gimmicks, the bill from our estimation costs about $460 billion in deficits in the first 10 years and about 1.4 trillion in deficits in the second 10 years.”
• “If you use real world economics and reality-based scoring, not the spreadsheets they cooked up to manipulate a score, this thing represents a big deficit increase and it makes healthcare costs go up, not down and that is not my opinion, that’s the opinion of the chief actuary of Medicare/Medicaid,” he contends.
(http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/ryan-healthcare-gop-obama/2010/02/25/id/350962 ).
I’m sorry, you can’t take this president seriously. First..doctors cut off feet to make some cash,..then he accuses doctors of ripping out tonsils(which doctors rarely even do anymore), and then he says his car insurance didn’t cover a collision when he clearly only had liability insurance and all these years later he still doesn’t realize that. This person is going to overhaul our healthcare system…seriously. is this a joke? How could any sane person even consider these proposals?
There shouldn’t have to be even ONE concession, Why don’t Obama take out all the ear marks and special interest spending deals…isnt that what he campaigned on? But I guess we have all come to a realization that Obama is a lying SOB..Right?
Even though there are upwards of 150 concessions to the Republicans in the bill, they remain intransigent against the common good. Republicans are putting politics before the well being of the country.
Pelosi called a couple of liars OUT. Daily Caller missed it’s calling I guess.