Daily Pulse: Republicans Launch Strategy to Derail Bill
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on October 19th, 2009 4:38 am by HL
Daily Pulse: Republicans Launch Strategy to Derail Bill
“Senate Republicans, acknowledging they lack the votes to block a health care reform bill outright, have implemented a comprehensive political strategy to delay, define and derail,” Roll Call reports.
“With Democratic leaders and White House officials holed up in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) office negotiating a final bill, 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.”
“Senate Democrats are rejecting Republicans’ demands to slow things down, charging that the GOP isn’t interested in working with the majority to craft a bipartisan health care bill. Rather, Reid said repeatedly last week, the Republicans’ primary goal is to sink reform in order to undercut President Barack Obama.”
Said Reid: “There are challenges that lie before us because the Republicans are going to insist that we do it alone.”
However, Bloomberg notes the biggest challenge for Democrats may to “navigate fault lines in their own party over how to remake the U.S. medical system.”
