Grassley Calls Obama and Pelosi ... (wait for it) ... "Intellectually Dishonest’ [View All]

Grassley Calls Obama and Pelosi ‘Intellectually Dishonest’



Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, called President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi “intellectually dishonest” on Tuesday, saying that Democrats were using the flap over end-of-life consultations to divert attention away from health care legislation currently being considered in the House.

The Iowa Republican, while not explicitly mentioning euthanasia or rationing of care, also said that he did not want government policy to “treat life at age 85 different than we do life at 35.” (At a town hall meeting last week in Adel, Iowa, the senator said, “We should not have a government plan that will pull the plug on grandma.”)

Mr. Grassley — a member of the Gang of Six, the group of Senate Finance Committee members most responsible for that panel’s health care bill — told Fox News, “I have had very strong views for about four months during this debate that I’m not going to do anything with the health care bill that puts a government bureaucrat or any government policy making a determination on whether or not we are going to value life at the end of life any more than at age 30 or 20.”

Later in the interview, Mr. Grassley told the network’s Megyn Kelly that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi were trying to distract attention from what he called the “Pelosi bill, which is a government takeover of health care, exploding the deficit because it’s not paid for and it’s got high taxes in it.”

“So what they tried to do is divert attention, and they’ve done a very good job of diverting attention, and they’re intellectually dishonest when they say it because all of their proposals dealing with end of life are connected — with ways of saving money and takeover of national health care,” said Mr. Grassley. “And you see what goes on in other countries. And I don’t want that to happen in the United States, that we treat life at age 85 different than we do life at 35.”

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http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/grassley-calls-obama-pelosi-intellectually-dishonest/