WashPost blog
The Republicans simply don’t want to pass comprehensive health-care reform. That is the main lesson of today’s health-care summit. It started, as Steve Stromberg pointed out earlier, with the Republicans wanting to talk more about process than about the content of the various health-care bills. It approached an end with House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) delivering the core Republican message: “Scrap this bill.”
As I argued in a post I put up before the summit began, this discussion would be successful if it simply revealed the stark philosophical differences between the parties. That’s exactly what it’s done. Now it is absolutely clear that the only way health-care reform will pass is through majority rule in the Senate, otherwise known as the “reconciliation process.” Democrats will have to have the guts to do it on their own. Republicans wanted to talk about process or tried to poke holes in President Obama’s proposals. They sought not to emphasize their own ideas because their own bills are so much smaller and do so much less.
Obama sent a very strong signal toward the end of the summit: He wants a bill even if the only way to get it is through the reconciliation route. “I don’t think that the American people are interested in the process inside the Senate,” Obama replied in response to Sen. John McCain’s criticism of the idea that the Senate might try to pass a bill with fewer than 60 Senate votes. Most Americans, Obama said, believe in “majority rule.” So they do. The president was telling members of his own party: Press on.
Four revealing moments:
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