RNC Chairman Michael Steele released a statement today after President Obama unveiled his final health care plan. Here’s the full statement:
“I agree with the president, we have debated health care reform thoroughly. And I agree again that this reform is not about politics, but rather about the families, businesses, and economy of a nation – all of which simply cannot afford what the president and Congressional Democrats have been selling for the past year. While the president’s bravado sounds great, almost inspiring, it falls flat when the president tells Americans to make their voices heard. We have, Mr. President. You haven’t been listening.
“The president claims that his government-run health care experiment deserves an ‘up-or-down’ vote in Congress but the fact is that his plan has already received three ‘up-or-down’ votes: rejections from Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. What President Obama really wants to do is ram through his government takeover of health care with reconciliation, a parliamentary procedure that Senator Obama once said was ‘the wrong place for policy changes.’ The fact is reconciliation wasn’t designed to be and has never been used as a partisan political tactic to force wildly unpopular policies on America. This bill still costs over $2.5 trillion, puts government in control of personal health decisions, cuts Medicare, and empowers the government to set prices in the private market – ideas the majority of Americans adamantly oppose. And instead of working with Republicans to start over and come up with a bill based on bipartisan points of agreement, President Obama has decided to use Republican ideas as political cover for his government-run health care experiment that will destroy the doctor-patient relationship and add to our national deficit.”
