Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) said:
“I don’t play the blame game. I’m in the problem solving game. I think that’s too often what we feature around here. And it’s depressing, so my goal is how do we get enough votes to work together to solve the problem.”
Rep. Steven Cohen (D-Tenn.) said:
I don’t know who’s to blame. I don’t know if there is any person to blame. Processes sometimes take time. This is a very important decision. Obviously the easiest is to blame the Republicans. They haven’t come up to offer any solutions. They seem to just want to defeat it. That makes it much more difficult. But I think it’s a big issue with a lot of competing interests. Sometimes time is a good thing.
Rep. John Duncan (R-Ten.) said:
I think this is far too difficult a subject to rush it through just to meet some arbitrary deadline. I don’t know where there would be blame. I don’t think we should pass the bill that they’re talking about now.”
Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) said:
There would be enough blame to go around.
“(Laughing) That’s a good question. No comment. I don’t know the answer sorry.”
James Floyd, a healthcare researcher at Public Citizen, said:
The blame would lie squarely with Congress for failing to consider the only reform option that would simultaneously solve the problems of increasing costs and 50 million Americans being uninsured – single-payer. By excluding single-payer from the discussion early on, the debate on health reform became a dishonest one. And by failing to seriously consider legislation that would overhaul our fragmented system of employer-based private insurance and eliminate the profligate administrative waste associated with it, Congress is dooming the American public to additional years of inequity and unsustainable levels of health care spending.
Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, said:
For the past eight years Republicans have recommended a number of ways to expand health insurance coverage and to reduce health care costs. The Shaddegg legislation to allow citizens of any state to buy their health insurance from another state—avoiding costly state mandates—would drop the cost of health insurance by an average of 10-15%. Democrats said no. Two: Enzi pushed legislation allowing small businesses to combine to buy health insurance to expand availability and lower costs. Democrats said no. Three: there have been a series of efforts to stop the trial lawyer billionaires from looting hospitals, doctors and patients. Democrats have protected their paymasters here.
So now the Democrats want to tax the health insurance of working Americans to provide welfare payments to others. Democrats want to protect the trial lawyers and unions and ration health care for older and sicker Americans.
Democrats stopped health care reform. Now it is the duty of Republicans to stop the threatened taxing and rationing of health care.
Tom McClusky, Senior Vice President of FRC Action, said:
“This is all on President Obama and his lack of leadership. Just as he did with the omnibus, the stimulus and everything else he has proposed since taking office, the President came with big ideas, but no follow through – thus leaving the important details to some of the most liberal Members of Congress, who also happen to be in Democratic Leadership.
The end result? The only thing bipartisan about the President’s health care bill is the opposition to it. Even members of his own party rebel when faced with the huge boondoggle the people he allowed, by default, to create. Government options that shut out private businesses, government bureaucracies that will decide who gets what treatment and who just gets “a pill” (as the President might say.) And the biggest offense? Trying to use the bill to increase abortions in this country by subsidizing the horrible act with taxpayer dollars.
As Joe Biden once said when speaking of Barack Obama: “the presidency is not something that lends itself to on the job training.” Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and in this case Joe hit it on the nose.
Dean Baker, the Co-Director of the Center for Economic Policy Research, said:
There will be plenty of blame to go around. Obviously the special interest groups, even those who nominally support bill, will bear much of the blame since they put serious constraints on what could be done. The villains in that case are PhRMA, the insurance industry, the AMA, and the medical supply industry.
Of course the Republican leadership deserves much of the blame which they will gladly accept. They have openly made the defeat of reform as a political goal, so if they succeed, they will want to take credit.
The Blue Dogs and moderate Republicans also will deserve much of the blame. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party has made concession after concession in the interest of getting a bill through Congress. READ THE FULL RESPONSE HERE.