Earlier today, I had an interesting exchange with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) about the abortion language in the Senate health care bill. She seemed to think Harry Reid made the right call–that the provision is similar in many ways to the provision passed by the Senate Finance Committee, which she supported. Interestingly, though, she also said the notorious Group of Six health care negotiators–including staunch conservatives Chuck Grassley and Mike Enzi–also thought that language was acceptable.
“We discussed that for an extensive period of time within the Group of Six and what approach to take that would work, and be consistent, with codifying current law, and we thought that the approach that was embraced in the Senate Finance Committee did that.”
Now, of course, Republicans are all up in arms. I asked Snowe whether Grassley and Enzi believed at the time that Reid’s approach–segregating federal and private funds to prevent tax payer dollars from financing abortion–was sufficient.
“You better ask them,” she said
“But you were in the Group of Six with them.”
“I was, that’s right!” she said. “We had a lot of discussions, there was a discussion at the time with respect to having a rider policy. But I thought, and I’ll say others thought, that there’s a difficulty with having a separate rider for many reasons that have already been mentioned.”
