Republican centrist senators who have participated in negotiations on crafting a bipartisan healthcare bill have been among those targeted and pressured by political and business interests during the August recess, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) claimed Friday.
Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and leader of the so-called "group of six" senators negotiating a reform bill, said that the three Republican members of that group have been under tremendous pressure from their own party.
"The Republican leadership in the Senate and in the House is doing its utmost to kill this bill," Baucus told the editorial board of the Helena Independent Record. "They are putting intense political pressure on Chuck Grassley, Olympia Snow and Mike Enzi, to bow out, because they want to kill it."
Baucus pointed specifically to the prospects of his committee's ranking member, Sen. Grassley, potentially facing a primary challenge next year over his work on the healthcare bill.
"He knows a lot of the opposition against him is orchestrated," he said. "I don't know this, but I strongly suspect they're going to Iowa, they're trying to stir things up to get somebody to run against Chuck in the primary."
Baucus said he doesn't believe that Grassley would abandon the negotiations, but offered words of sympathy for the Iowa Republican and the other two senators working on putting together a bill.
"I know it's easy for me to say right now, because I'm getting beat up by both sides, but not nearly as much as you are by the Republican hierarchy," he said.
President Obama sought on Saturday to debunk what he termed as "outrageous myths" floating around in the media about his push for healthcare reform in his weekly radio address.
Framing his signature initiative as the hallmark of this political generation, the president again laid out his arguments to overhaul the health system in America.
President Obama has played "fast and loose with the facts" in the debate over healthcare reform, Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) argued in the GOP's weekly radio address on Saturday.
Drawing on his experience as a physician, Price asserted that the president's efforts to combat alleged misinformation in the debate over his health proposals have only spread more misinformation.
In one of the more interesting campaign events of the midterm cycle, the leading Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania will hold a joint town hall meeting with the Democratic primary challenger.
Former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) accepted an invitation from Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) to hold a town hall at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., on September 2.
Sestak, who's challenging the newly-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter in a primary, issued the invitation yesterday.
"I want to show you the light on the public health care option!" Sestak told Toomey in a statement. "What do you say?"
Today, the Toomey campaign "eagerly" accepted, going so far as to invite Sestak out for a beer after the meeting.
"I eagerly accept Congressman Sestak's gracious invitation, and look forward to our respective campaigns working out the logistics over the next couple of days," Toomey said. "I'm happy to welcome Joe to the great city of Allentown and I'd extend to him an invitation to share a beer with me at one of our fine local establishments after the town hall meeting."
(Maybe that beer will take place at Rookie's, the Allentown restaurant that Toomey owns with his brothers.)
This actually looks to be a win-win for the participants. Sestak gets to raise his profile in the campaign, pitting himself front and center against the almost certain Republican general election candidate.
Toomey, on the other hand, gets to throw some coal on the Sestak vs. Specter fire, encouraging a bruising primary that will leave the eventual Democratic victor weakened.
Specter doesn't seem to be invited to the Allentown town hall, but Toomey issued a challenge for Specter to debate him on a separate occassion.
"Unfortunately, with Senator Specter, one never knows which Arlen Specter will show up
Republicans are making a "serious mistake" by thinking that stopping Democrats' healthcare reform will result in political victories in 2010, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) warned.
Waxman asserted that GOP-ers would be in error to look to the 1994 healthcare fight, in which they blocked President Bill Clinton's reform efforts, as a template for the 2009 fight.
"They are looking at the playbook from 1993 and 1994 where the Republicans pulled someone like Bob Dole back from working out a deal on healthcare in order to deny President Clinton a victory," Waxman said. "And they were rewarded in the election in '94."
"They are playing that same card again, but this time it's not going to work," he added.
Waxman, the chairman of one of the three committees crafting healthcare legislation in the House, signaled that Republican support wouldn't be essential to passing legislation if members of the GOP refuse to play ball on negotiations.
"I think it's always important for legislation to be bipartisan," he said. "But you don't always achieve that goal. If the Republicans don't want it because they want to deny Obama a political success, you don't stop your efforts."
The House's healthcare reform bill will have to be changed before it can even win a majority among Democrats, one centrist, Blue Dog Democrat insisted Friday.
Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.), who opposed the health bill on the Ways and Means committee, signaled that Democrats may not even have the votes to force through a preliminary health bill without any Republican support.
"And in order to get a majority even among the Democratic Party, we're going to have to change the way that House bill is formatted right now," Altmire said during an appearance on Fox News.
Those words come after liberal Democrats strongly signaled to President Obama earlier this week that a publicly available health plan would be essential to winning their votes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she wouldn't be able to pass a bill without a public option.
Altmire said there would need to be differences of opinion resolved within the Democratic caucus on the health bill before the legislation moves forward.
"There is a difference of opinion on a lot of issues," he said. "These are not insignificant issues, and there are differences of opinion."
The Pennsylvania Democrat said that he's still hopeful a health bill will pass by the end of the year, but said the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) would need to offer a much more favorable assessment of the bill's fiscal impact before it wins his vote.
"Until I see some third-party validation through the CBO and others that the bills that we're going to be called to vote on actually bring down the cost of healthcare and restrain the rate of growth, I'm not going to be able to support it." Altmire explained.
Senators should explore breaking the healthcare reform bill before Congress into smaller pieces, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Friday.
Reacting to recent reports that lawmakers may break the bill into pieces so as to be able to pass some non-controversial elements, Barrasso, who's been at the forefront of the healthcare debate for the GOP, endorsed the idea.
"I like the idea of breaking it into pieces," he said on CNN Radio. "See what we can get done right now then move onto the next thing."
Some senators, most notably the centrists comprising the so-called "group of six" trying to hash out a bipartisan bill, have been exploring either trimming or breaking up the bill.
Barrasso defended that tactic, as well as other Republican efforts on the bill, as in the best interests of the country.
"This isn't about political calculation, it's about doing what's best for the people of our country," he said.
Americans have been "traumatized" by the national debate over healthcare reform, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said Friday.
The shrill terms of the debate, such as so-called "death panels," as well as a fear by those who are currently insured about whether their coverage would suffer have distressed the country, Nelson told CNN Radio.
"America has been traumatized by the debate because of the labeling of certain parts -- like the hospice panel -- as the 'death panel,'" Nelson said.
"The concern is what happens to the 200 million Americans who have coverage on the private side right now," Nelson added. "They're worried that they're going to lose something for somebody else to win something."
Nelson said that his own town halls have been rather civil, but that the raucous confrontations taking place at some of his colleagues' meetings would play out once they return to Washington in September.
He argued it was "premature" to say whether or not the bill would be able to pass, but anticipated a higher-level discussion of healthcare next month.
"I think it'll be a better debate when we get back to Washington," Nelson said. "I also think it will be a time to put to use what we've heard back home."
Pharmaceutial companies don't make that much money, so politicians shouldn't beat up on them in the healthcare reform debate, NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg said today.
"You know, last time I checked, pharmaceutical companies don't make a lot of money, their executives don't make a lot of money," Bloomberg said while co-hosting a radio show on WOR Radio this morning. "Not that they couldn't do better,"
Bloomberg corrected himself later after doing a Google search, in which he found out that pharmaceutical executives are "making a decent amount and more than a decent amount."
Bloomberg did take a shot at drug companies for selling drugs cheaper in other countries than in the United States, but said "that's not a reason to go and beat up on big Pharma."
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) continued her Facebook note campaign against healthcare reform, writing Friday that tort reform is a necessary part of healthcare legislation.
"As Governor of Alaska, I learned a little bit about being a target for frivolous suits and complaints (Please, do I really need to footnote that?)" Palin wrote on her Facebook page.
Paraphrasing former President Bill Clinton, Palin said she feels health care providers' pain, arguing those companies are targeted by "opportunists and people with no scruples."
"We cannot have health care reform without tort reform," Palin insisted. "The two are intertwined."
Palin posed questions for Obama, a recurring feature in her series of Facebook notes: "Why no legal reform? Why continue to encourage defensive medicine that wastes billions of dollars and does nothing for the patients? Do you want health care reform to benefit trial attorneys or patients?"
Palin's Facebook notes, of course, set off the debate over so-called "death panels" in regards to end-of-life care in healthcare reform legislation earlier this month.
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