This is just bush league.
Remember Rep.-elect Andy Harris (R-MD-01), who stepped in it jumped in it with both feet the other day with his health care whining?
Well, he's fairly squishing it between his toes now:
Speaking to WBAL-TV on Tuesday, Harris said he asked about the start date "because every member is obviously going to have to think about how they align the health insurance they have now to their new health insurance."
Harris said he was not talking about himself.
"Not my family," he told the Baltimore television station. "I have insurance, and I have the ability to have insurance. But for anyone else who gets a job — and again, the irony that the federal government would go to the American people and our employers and say you have to provide insurance — and yet our federal employees get hired, and if they don't get hired on the right day of the month, they actually have to go without health care for awhile."
Ah! Yes! Right! He wasn't talking about himself!
"He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,” said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange.
“Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap,” added the aide, who was struck by the similarity to Harris’s request and the public option he denounced as a gateway to socialized medicine.
Harris, a Maryland state senator who works at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and several hospitals on the Eastern Shore, also told the audience, “This is the only employer I’ve ever worked for where you don’t get coverage the first day you are employed,” his spokeswoman Anna Nix told POLITICO.
It's so obvious!
When he asked what he would do without 28 days of coverage, he meant... uh... America!
When he asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap, he meant... uh... Freedom!
When he insisted, "This was the only employer I've ever worked for where you don't get coverage the first day," he meant... uh... Support the Troops!
Listen. This was essentially the new employee orientation he was sitting in. It wasn't a damn policy forum. Harris wasn't making any larger points about the health care system. He was asking questions about himself and his own coverage, because that's what the meeting was about. What would be the damn point of debating the supposed "irony" of health insurance reform with the Congressional equivalent of the Human Resources department?
Please.