Dodd's Health Care Charge and Re-Election Hopes - CQPolitics.com
Dodd insisted the Congressional Budget Office projection was misleading; the draft bill, he noted, was deliberately silent on several central questions, such as how an overhaul will be paid for and whether a government-run “public plan” should be created as an alternative to private coverage. But that explanation only gave more ammunition to the Republicans, who lambasted him for making the panel start work from such a half-finished starting point.
“It is a joke if we run through this stack of paper,” said Arizona’s John McCain . Tennessee’s milder-mannered Lamar Alexander , the GOP’s conference chairman, said the panel should start over with a new bill.
But Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, the top Republican on the committee, said it was the committee’s majority staff, and not Dodd, who had been inflaming the partisan tone by keeping the GOP in the dark in the run-up to the markup start. “His presence has dramatically improved the process,” Enzi said, since Dodd stepped in this month for ailing Chairman Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Still, Enzi said, “this isn’t how Sen. Kennedy and I have worked together in the past,” and it is “grossly irresponsible” that the committee wasn’t going to take more time to solve the disagreements between the two parties.
New York TimesLive-Blogging Obama's News ConferenceHe notes that the health care system has many inefficiencies. Reform is “the right policy and the right thing to do.” 12:57: Follow-up on driving insurance companies out of business? “That's not logical,” Obama says. “I think there's going to be some Obama assails Iran for violent response to protests Politics Today: GOP Attacks Obama Over Iran CQ Transcript: Sen. McCain on CBS's 'Face the Nation'
ABC NewsSince then, Obama has jawboned doctors to back a public health-insurance option, Congress has begun work on writing bills and number-crunchers have started wading deep into the issue of how to pay for an historic re-ordering of American medicine. Greens call for new GAO, Congressional Budget Office studies on