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Newt Gingrich believes it’s time for Republicans to “team up” with Democrats and work on health care legislation. He asks both sides to “be not afraid.” Very cool. So what, according to the Gingrich gospels, is it that both sides should not be afraid of?
Obama should not be afraid to drop the 4,500 pages of Democratic health legislation. He should commit to work in an open, bipartisan manner on new legislation that would earn public support both for its substance and through the transparent process by which it is crafted.
The Republicans should not be afraid to walk in with a series of positive ideas and to work with Democrats on legislation in a genuinely bipartisan fashion. Some GOP partisans so deeply distrust Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid that they assume even meeting with them is an act of betrayal. But Republicans should have confidence that they can always say no to bad ideas. Indeed, they should be open to the possibility of finding supportable measures that would be good for the country and totally compatible with their values.
There’s a pile of bull for you. Essentially, Gingrich is suggesting that Dems drop the current bills and start from scratch…as if the last year of attempts to arrive at a bipartisan agreement never happened. As for Republicans, he suggests they walk in with “positive” (aka “conservative“) ideas and to remember they can always say no to “bad” (aka “liberal“) ideas.
Please, have we not heard this crap enough times? Republicans have made it painfully obvious that they are not willing to compromise on anything. Their real and only strategy is to block health care reform (as well as any other Democratic policy) and to then point to Obama as a miserable failure. With that, they hope, comes victory in November and then ultimately the White House in 2012.
The President will have another futile shot at arriving at a bipartisan agreement at his health care summit next week. Dems will do their thing. Republicans will do theirs and Obama will be no closer to having a bipartisan bill to sign than he has today. Let’s hope this is the final attempt to bring Republicans on board. There are now at least 11 Democratic Senators ready to push through a health care bill through Congress by means of reconciliation. One which includes a public option.
If a health care bill not completely written by Republicans has any chance of passing, it’s going to have to be by a 51 vote majority. This is clear.
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The number of pages in the HCR bill keeps mysteriously growing, like the head count at the 9-12 Rally.