Dear Senator Baucus,
here's your best buddy and "negotiating" partner Chuck Grassley on health care reform:
On MSNBC this morning, Norah O’Donnell asked Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, "what needs to be in" a health care reform bill "for it to be bipartisan." After saying it needs to be paid for, Grassley declared, "We need to make sure that there’s no public option." When O’Donnell double-checked that Grassley was saying that a public option was a dealbreaker for Republicans, he replied, "Absolutely." Watch it:
That's fine for Sen. Grassley, though as ThinkProgress points out, 56 percent of his Iowa constiutents want a public plan, as does 72 percent of the American public.
So who are you going to side with, Senator Baucus?
I know I sound like a broken record here, but "bipartisan" doesn't mean "compromise." It means Democratic capitulation. Haven't we just had enough of that?