Speaking before 500 Wyomingites in Gillette last night, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) took flack from colleagues and voters for participating in bipartisan health care reform negotiations on the Senate Finance Committee…and quickly gave up the game.
“If I hadn’t been involved in this process as long as I have and to the depth as I have, you would already have national health care,” he said. “It’s not where I get them to compromise, it’s what I get them to leave out.”
State Rep. Timothy Hallinan called for Enzi to ditch the so-called “Gang of Six” talks.
But that’s not Enzi’s philosophy. “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” he said.
Despite Enzi’s apparent belief that his chief role in the process is to slow things down, block national health care, and kill key provisions so that Republicans don’t–to extend the metaphor–get eaten, a number of key Democrats insist that health care reform legislation will be better if it comes out of the Finance Committee than if Democrats pass it on their own.
