Via John Aravosis, GOP House leadership says that if Obama won't agree to starting over from scratch, they won't come to his meeting. They are obviously trying to up the ante on this bill, calling for Obama to rule out using reconciliation to pass it.
In a tersely worded letter to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on Monday, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) wrote that Republicans “would rightly be reluctant” to participate in the Feb. 25 bipartisan health care meeting if the White House refused to consider scrapping the current health care reform bills.
“Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said [Monday] that the President is ‘absolutely not’ resetting the legislative process for health care,” Boehner and Cantor wrote. “If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate.”
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In their letter, Boehner and Cantor called on Obama to take reconciliation off the table as a “show good faith” to the GOP.
“Eliminating the possibility of reconciliation would represent an important show of good faith to Republicans and the American people,” the letter said.
The White House response from Robert Gibbs is strongly worded in its support for the current bills.
The President is adamant that we seize this historic moment to pass meaningful health insurance reform legislation. He began this process by inviting Republican and Democratic leaders to the White House on March 5 of last year, and he’s continued to work with both parties in crafting the best possible bill. He’s been very clear about his support for the House and Senate bills because of what they achieve for the American people: putting a stop to insurance company abuses, extending coverage to millions of hardworking Americans, getting control of rising premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and reducing the deficit.
The President looks forward to reviewing Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out at the beginning of this process, and as recently as the State of the Union Address. He’s open to including any good ideas that stand up to objective scrutiny. What he will not do, however, is walk away from reform and the millions of American families and small business counting on it. The recent news that a major insurer plans to raise premiums for some customers by as much as 39 percent is a stark reminder of the consequences of doing nothing.
Taking anything more off the table than has already been lost has to be out of the question for the White House. Given the churlishness of this back-of-the-hand response from Cantor and Boehner, Obama should either proceed without Republican participation, or call the whole thing off.