House Republican leadership immediately postponed the vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act after Saturday's shootings that killed six and left Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords critically injured. Congressional Quarterly's Congress.org is hopeful that the rhetoric in the debate once Congress takes it back up will "settle down."
“There will be a time of introspection,” said Rep. Michael C. Burgess of Texas, a physician and vice chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, and a vehement critic of the health care law.
But while “we should always be mindful that we’re in the people’s House,” Burgess stressed the debate over repealing the health law would continue and that “we are required to do the people’s business.”
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“I expect it will change no one’s vote. I hope it will change everyone’s tone,” Peter Welch, D-Vt., said Sunday. ”My expectation is that the tone of the debate will be modulated, but we will not be any less passionate. I hope we will tone down the ad hominem attacks and the personal attacks on the people we disagree with.”
Caustic partisan speeches over repeal efforts dominated the first days of the 112th Congress last week, as both parties volleyed criticisms across the aisle.
“The job-killing health care law was passed over the objections of the American people, and they have continued to speak out against it, loudly and clearly,” House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said Jan. 7. “With this vote, we have begun to make Washington listen and heed the voice of the people.”
That same day, Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland slammed the GOP repeal efforts as a “return of the worst insurance company abuses” that would “explode the federal deficit.”
And that's where we're at. John Boehner says that the government forced this "job-killing" bill on the American people against their will, and that's exactly the same in terms of "caustic" rhetoric as Hoyer saying repeal would let insurance companies off the hook again and increase the deficit. Long live the false equivalency.
As long as this thing is still called the “Repeal the Job Killing Health Care Law Act,” I'm nto too hopeful about the chances that Republicans won't talk about the tyranny of the government forcing affordable health care on Americans. Rep. Chellie Pingree has called for Republicans to change the name of the bill in recognition that "in this environment and at this moment in our nation’s history, it’s not the message we should be sending."
It's the central message, however, of the GOP. They have nothing else but to claim that everything the administration and Democrats have done and want to do is "job-killing" and is a government overreach and creeping totalitarianism. There's no indication yet that even the attempted assassination of one of their colleagues will change that one iota.