http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/senate-republicans/grassley-i-cant-back-bill-now-because-dems-might-do-bill-without-me-later/Grassley: I Can’t Back Bill Now Because Dems Might Do Bill Without Me Later
The evidence that GOP Senator Chuck Grassley isn’t serious about negotiating a bipartisan health care compromise is beyond overwhelming at this point, but here’s still more.
As you may have heard, Grassley announced in a statement last night that he can’t support the health care bill that is expected from the Senate Finance Committee today, citing concerns about abortion and illegal immigrants. But I wanted to focus on this amusing nugget from Grassley’s statement:
“On top of all that, there’s no guarantee that a Finance Committee bill, even if it becomes bipartisan, will stay that way after it leaves the committee. An overriding issue for some time has been the fact that members of the Democratic leadership haven’t made a commitment to back a broad bipartisan bill through the entire process.”
Grassley’s position really appears to be that a key reason he can’t back the bill now is that Dems haven’t sworn a blood-oath not to do a bill alone later if no bill emerges that can get “broad” Republican support. This amounts to asking Dems to promise in advance to do nothing at all in the event that a “broad” number of Repubicans don’t agree to get behind some kind of compromise bill.
By this standard, in order to satisfy Grassley’s definition of true bipartisanship, Dems quite literally must cede all their power and leverage in advance, even as Republicans are refusing en masse to back any proposal that can reasonably be called a compromise. That really is Grassley’s position, with no exaggeration.
Update: To be clearer, what this really means is that in order to meet Grassley’s definition of bipartisanship, Dems must effectively hand over to Republicans total veto power over health care reform. It’s that simple.
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