Since the president didn’t get Republicans to toe the line exactly as he wants them to toe it, well, he’s going to push forward on his party’s bill to overhaul our health care system come hell or high water. According to Greg Sargent, his criticism of Republicans for not supporting exchanges (after the public option was dropped)
. . . combined with his assertion that Repubicans need to do some “soul-searching” on whether they wanted to join Dems in tackling reform as they have defined it, amount to an unmistakable vow to move foward without them.
Upon “reading news reports saying that Democrats are set on using reconciliation to ram the Senate bill through Congress,” one of Obama’s closest GOP friends in the Senate Oklahoma’s Tom Coburn wondered if yesterday’s summit was pointless”: “It’s fairly disappointing. . . . If the Dems are just going to run the bill anyway, why’d we just do it?”
The Democrats can fret and fume at how supposedly intransigent the Republicans are, but they’re the ones who haven’t budged since yesterday’s summit. It appears they’re moving forward with reconciliation as they had been plotting before the summit took place–and without incorporating any of the ideas Republicans presented at yesterday’s open forum.
It seems its entire purpose was not to consider all ideas, but intead to advance the Democrats’.
“Upon “reading news reports saying that Democrats are set on using reconciliation to ram the Senate bill through Congress,””
?????????????
The Senate bill has already passed the Senate with 60 votes. It does not need “reconciliation” to pass the House. It will then become law.
Reconciliation only comes into play with the bill to modify the Senate version, once it has already become law.
I thought it might have been political theater when they opened with “All That Jazz.” I thought the President’s balcony scene was very effective, though–“Don’t Cry For Me, South Chicago.”
The “political” theater was great. Especially when he had to tell everyone he was the President. How can we forget?????
Then, Tano, as per the title of this post, why hold the summit at all.
Dan,
Because the president wanted to give the Republicans yet another opportunity to have some input into making the bill as broadly supported as possible.
I think it is fair to say that the odds were always high that it would be nothing but political theatre, because the Republicans have locked themselves into a ‘total opposition” mentality. Any Republican who dared support the bill now would be run out of their own party, no matter what kind of concessions they won. But it was a good thing to give them a chance, nonetheless.
I am not sure that you really understand the process here – given my need to make my previous comment. The Senate bill is already passed. The discussion now is over what the new bill – that modifies the Senate bill, will look like. That has not been finalized at all – so moving ahead the process (which starts with having the House pass the Senate bill), does not mark the end of any negotiations, or concessions on either party’s side.
Tano, please detail how the president is incorporating Republican ideas into that new bill.
Dan,
As I said, it is not finalized at all. We’ll see what ideas get incorporated.
Let me ask you this – how many Republicans will be willing to support the bill if some of their ideas do get incorporated?
Tano, recently recovering from digging himself out of his mom’s basement in lthe wake of global warming, now returns to proven his lack of knowlege again on health care.
The House won’t pass the senate bill w/o the reconcilliation passing.
Because that’s the position of the vast majority of Americans! It’s called representative government — something the left has always hated.
And once again Tano contradicts itself.
First it says this:
The Senate bill has already passed the Senate with 60 votes. It does not need “reconciliation” to pass the House. It will then become law.
But then, when trying to explain why Barack Obama flat-out lied and put on this bit of political theater with no intention of listening to Republicans at all, Tano then claims the bill is not finalized.
As I said, it is not finalized at all.
Tano cannot keep its lies straight, just like its Barack Obama cannot keep its lies straight. Its Barack Obama was shamed and humiliated yesterday by having to admit that it made campaign promises for which it does not want to be held accountable, and now Tano is out here trying to spin for it.
I didn’t watch much of the summit coverage. I figured it would be seven hours of Obama lecturing everybody else, and I’ve heard more than enough of that already.
He’d better get all the kicks he can out of reminding us all that he won the election. It’s probably the last one he’s ever going to win.
Tano writes:
Hello? The only way to accomplish this is with an all day dog and pony show? Really? Really? Really? Really? Really?
Toss the Republicans a sop and they will eagerly comply. That is how the community organizer works? Really? Really? Really? Really? Really?
Can we say that this is how The Won defines bipartisanship?
The key words in Tano’s comment are “some input,” as in “you had your two cents worth, now vote for the stinker and shut up. You are losers, you know.”