An angry John Boehner has sent a heat-seeking missive to a former caucus mate: former GOP Rep, and current PhRMA president Billy Tauzin.
In the letter, which Boehner forwarded to the executives of PhRMA’s member companies, the House Minority Leader charges that PhRMA’s alliance with the White House on health care reform amounts to appeasement. “Appeasement rarely works as a conflict resolution strategy,” Boehner writes. “The simple truth is, two wrongs don’t make a right. And the short-sighted health care deal PhRMA struck with the Obama Administration at your urging provides confirmation of this time-tested maxim on an epic and tragic scale.”
You can read the entire letter here. It comes as the relationship between the White House and PhRMA has soured slightly.
“The Obama Administration tacitly acknowledged last week that the President will not be bound by the $80 billion limit PhRMA and its board of directors were led to believe had been secured in exchange for your organization’s support of the Administration’s health care takeover,” Boehner writes, “and key Democrats…have said explicitly they will not honor the agreement.”
Boehner may be trying to touch a vestigial party-faithful nerve in the erstwhile Republican–referring to him as “Billy” and asking him to choose between his adopted party and the Democrats, which he abandoned in the 1990s. (Tauzin was once a Blue Dog.)
But Boehner’s also baiting him–casting Tauzin as the Neville Chamberlain of health care policy, and warning that his efforts to appease the Democrats will result in tragedy. Let’s see if Tauzin fires back.
