GOP Says “No Thanks” To Obama’s Bipartisan Health Care Chat

When President Obama told Katie Couric before the Super Bowl on Sunday that he wants to hold a televised bipartisan meeting on health care reform later this month, it was greeted as a potential breakthrough on the president’s stalled signature issue and a significant step towards breaking the partisan gridlock that has gripped the health care debate and all of Washington.

On Monday, top Republicans responded to the president’s offer: No thanks.

House Minority Leader John Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor sent a letter to the White House questioning whether the president is “sincere” in his efforts to include the GOP and expressing doubt that the meeting will be a “truly open, bipartisan discussion.”The GOP leaders submitted a lengthy list of “questions” they say are meant to determine how “sincere” the president’s offer of bipartisan cooperation is while attacking Democrats and the president on transparency and charging he has ignored Republican ideas on health care in the last year.

Most important is the threat from Boehner and Cantor that “Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate” unless Obama promised to start over on health care legislation and scrap the current outlines stalled in the House and Senate. Republicans are essentially calling the president out, demanding that health care become their bill if the White House wants to play bipartisan ball.

We welcome President Obama’s announcement of forthcoming bipartisan health care talks.  In fact, you may remember that last May, Republicans asked President Obama to hold bipartisan discussions on health care in an attempt to find common ground, but he declined and instead chose to work with only Democrats.  

Since then, the President has given dozens of speeches on health care reform, operating under the premise that the more the American people learn about his plan, the more they will come to like it.  Just the opposite has occurred: a majority of Americans oppose the House and Senate health care bills and want them scrapped so we can start over with a step-by-step approach focused on lowering costs for families and small businesses.  Just as important, scrapping the House and Senate health care bills would help end the uncertainty they are creating for workers and businesses and thus strengthen our shared commitment to focusing on creating jobs. 

Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward on health care in a bipartisan way, does that mean he will agree to start over so that we can develop a bill that is truly worthy of the support and confidence of the American people?  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said today that the President is “absolutely not” resetting the legislative process for health care.  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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Your answers to these critical questions will help determine whether this will be a truly open, bipartisan discussion or merely an intramural exercise before Democrats attempt to jam through a job-killing health care bill that the American people can’t afford and don’t support.  ‘Bipartisanship’ is not writing proposals of your own behind closed doors, then unveiling them and demanding Republican support.  Bipartisan ends require bipartisan means. 

These questions are also designed to try and make sense of the widening gap between the President’s rhetoric on bipartisanship and the reality.  We cannot help but notice that each of the President’s recent bipartisan overtures has been coupled with harsh, misleading partisan attacks.  

For instance, the President decries Republican ‘obstruction’ when it was Republicans who first proposed bipartisan health care talks last May.  The President says Republicans are ‘sitting on the sidelines’ just days after holding up our health care alternative and reading from it word for word.  The President has every right to use his bully pulpit as he sees fit, but this is the kind of credibility gap that has the American people so fed up with business as usual in Washington. 

We look forward to receiving your answers and continuing to discuss ways we can move forward in a bipartisan manner to address the challenges facing the American people. 

While it seems unlikely that Republicans will boycott Obama’s bipartisan health care summit,  this letter makes it almost certain that nothing of substance will come out of that televised meeting and that the health care impasse will continue. The White House will never agree to completely scrap the legislation currently on the table, something Boehner and Cantor fully understand and are trying to use to their advantage in what is an otherwise difficult situation for the GOP.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs responded to the note from Boehner and Cantor, saying that a step back to square one is not going to happen. Gibbs said the president has “been very clear” in supporting the bills in the House and Senate and that he will not “walk away from reform.”

“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,” Gibbs said in a statement.

He added: “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 businesses counting on it.”

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