Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican, said Democrats are “hiding” the health care bill while they buy off votes.
“They’re hiding the bill,” Gregg said to reporters. “This is another one of those processes where it’s being written in a hidden room, behind a hidden room, behind a hidden door.”
“The reason they’re doing that is because they’re buying constituency groups in the House with this bill, and until they’ve bought off all their groups they don’t want anybody to know about it, what they’re actually paying for and what the price is to get those groups on board,” Gregg said.
Gregg protested the way that he said Democrats have tried to shut down minority rights to pass “the most significant piece of legislation in the arena of public policy that I’ve ever seen.”
Gregg made the comments while talking to reporters mostly about procedural matters should Speaker Nancy Pelosi pass the Senate bill out of the House and a reconciliation bill, leading to a showdown in the Senate.
Gregg said he was confident that reconciliation cannot occur unless the House has passed the Senate bill and sent it to President Obama for his signature, which would cancel one option that House Democrats are exploring to see if they can have some guarantee that the Senate work on a reconciliation fix after they pass the original Senate bill. This option and Democrats’ consideration of it was first reported publicly by The Daily Caller last week.