Are the Senate Finance Committee’s bipartisan health care negotiations getting anywhere? According to the panel’s lead Republican, Chuck Grassley, the answer is no. And yes!
“I don’t think it’s going to be possible to work it out with the administration because they’re all over the field — all over the ball park, I guess, as we say,” Grassley told reporters in Iowa, presumably while trying to come up with the word “map.”
He added that the Obama administration has been unclear about whether it wants health care legislation to include a public option, which, Grassley said, “leads to single-payer, completely government-run health care system and no choice.”
So I guess that’s it for bipartisanship, then, right? Well….
“I do believe it’s possible to reach an agreement,” Grassley added.
But I have to confess to you to be a little more cautious when I say that now, because I’ve been out here listening to my constituents. And if — and if other members of Congress are hearing what I’m hearing, they’re saying, “Slow it down. Do it a little more carefully. Make sure you know what you’re doing. And maybe do it even a little more incrementally.”
What we may be witnessing, more than any problem with the White House, is Grassley’s tendency to say one thing to people in Washington and another to people back home. Grassley recently told a group of constituents in Iowa that they were right to worry that Democratic health care reform would mean ‘pulling the plug on grandma,’ then spent two weeks walking the claim back after his colleagues and certain members of the media objected.
