Hope and Fail

Health care presser lies, Pt. 9: Claiming bipartisanship

President Obama said he appreciates the Republicans in the Senate who are contributing to health care reform, when actually the Democrats have been blocking GOP ideas.

From the Washington Post’s transcript of the presser:

I am very appreciative that people like Chuck Grassley on the Finance Committee in the Senate, people like Mike Enzi, people like Olympia Snowe, have been serious in engaging Democrats in trying to figure out how do we actually get a system that works.

And even in those committees where you didn’t see Republican votes, we’ve seen Republican ideas. So, for example, in the HELP Committee in the Senate, 160 Republican amendments were adopted into that bill because they’ve got good ideas to contribute.

So the politics may dictate that they don’t vote for health care reform because they think, you know, it will make Obama more vulnerable. But if they’ve got a good idea, we’ll still take it.

That 160 number is an exaggeration of what “good ideas” from Republicans were accepted. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., the ranking GOP member on the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, blasted Democrats for shooting down Republican ideas.

From The American Spectator:

Earlier today, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee passed its health care bill on a strict party line vote. Ranking Republican Sen. Mike Enzi notes that “In 12 days of mark-up, we had 45 roll call votes on Republican-sponsored amendments, and only 2 prevailed.”

The 160 amendments Obama referred to weren’t “good ideas” on heath care, they were procedural votes, as Enzi’s spokesman, Craig Orfield, told Philip Klein:

The 160 refers to what we call technicals – these are amendments drafted to either correct technical errors in the bill language – and that can be anything from an amendment which cites the wrong section and paragraph of existing law (ex: Section 302 when we meant section 304) to errors in punctuation or transposed words.

Moreover, the vast majority of these were so non-controversial that the majority didn’t even demand a vote – they were simply adopted by unanimous consent.

As you note from Sen. Enzi’s remarks only 45 GOP amendments, which we consider to have made substantive changes or improvements, were allowed a vote. 2 of those were agreed to.

POTUS is echoing the same nonsensical line on this as Axelrod and Emanuel last week.

Agreement on technical amendments is no pedigree of bipartisanship.

And we can’t forget that David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel said the White House would be OK with a strictly party-line vote on health care reform.

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