So says the President. They will apparently use any means necessary to pass this legislation, to include reconciliation, which the President gave the go ahead to Congress to use yesterday in his speech. However wrong, their plan is quite clever.
Obama is trying to use his honed political skills to get his health care legislation through congress. Here is his tactic. A couple of days ago he wrote a letter offering to include some Republican ideas. The media took that and ran with it saying that he would include these ideas to get bipartisan support. But the letter actually states that he would be willing to explore these 4 ideas. There was no strong support telling his Democratic comrades to put them into the legislation. Secondly, Obama knows that what conservatives want is fundamentally different than what is in the current legislation. He knew that Republicans would not change their mind just for these four small ideas that do not reduce the government’s role in health care and fortunately they did not. This creates a win-win situation for him as long as the public is left in the dark. He appears to be bi-partisan while he can paint Republicans as obstructionists who do not really want reform. The same tired message they have used for years. This leads into their reconciliation process that Obama has now endorsed.
Reconciliation, as they will tell you, is used quite a bit for procedural type issues with bills, but what they won’t tell you is that is it never used because they cannot get the 60 required votes in the Senate. What they appear to be prepared to do is really unprecedented and is typical of the partisan tactics Obama has used throughout his short tenure as President. With this process all they need are the votes of the Democrats. Hopefully they will not get them, but they are trying everything they can to be successful in this endeavor. Obama met last night with 10 Democrats who voted no last time, one of them being Jim Matheson of Utah. For him he has a special deal. Yesterday Obama appointed his brother to the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. You are pretty naïve if you think this is simple coincidence; especially considering all the other deals that have been going on. It falls in line with other appointments and promised appointments. Robert Bauer to Chief Counsel and the White House offer to Sestak to not run in the primary against Specter come to mind.
In the end it is just more politics instead of coming up with workable solutions that will make health care sustainable for the future. I guess the real question is…are you fooled…or maybe…are you really surprised?
