Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) slammed Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) for his invocation of the Kennedy name on the Senate floor yesterday, calling it “disrespectful” and “unseemly” to invoke the Democratic family’s name in opposition to health care reform.
Barrasso provoked Baucus’ ire by referencing John F. Kennedy’s book “Profiles In Courage,” and saying that the health care debate “needs one courageous Democrat, one out of 60, to stand up and say ‘I am going to vote no.'”
He continued: “We need the kind of courage that John Kennedy wrote about in ‘Profiles In Courage.'”
“It is time for a new chapter to be written in ‘Profiles In Courage’, and one of the members of this body can be that ‘Profile,'” Barrasso said.
Baucus was not having it, and said that “it is disrespectful, it is unseemly, for senators in this body to invoke the names of Ted Kennedy, and Jack Kennedy, in opposition to this bill.”
“And I frankly am very much surprised that senators would go to that level,” he said.
He continued that John and Ted Kennedy “were senators who worked to find resolutions to agreements. They wanted to compromise.They wanted to work together to get just results.”
Republicans, said Baucus, “did not want to work with us because they thought it was better to make a political statement.”
“Where is the senator on that side of the aisle who’s got the courage to break from their leadership, to break from the partisanship they’re exercising on the other side of the aisle, to work together to pass health care reform,” he asked.
Here’s the video:
