Word: billed
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...citizens of Massachusetts elected Republican state senator Scott Brown to the Senate. While much debate has centered around the countless campaign gaffes committed by defeated Democratic candidate Martha Coakley, now is no time for retrospective second-guessing. With a monumental—and increasingly controversial—health care bill at stake in Congress, leaders of both parties must look past the superficialities of last week’s race and focus on the policy issues that affect the lives of all Americans...
...part to a message of post-partisan politics. However, recent votes on the Congressional floor have shown that the politicking in Washington today is characterized by more of the same divisive partisanship from before. No members of the GOP voted for the Senate version of the healthcare bill, and only one Republican representative affirmed it in the House. With a filibuster looming upon Brown’s election, Democrats in Congress should now take a new approach to the formulation and passage of health care legislation. Both parties must work together, cast partisan and ideological barriers aside, and consider...
...composition of the Senate will change the terms of engagement between Republicans and Democrats. While some in the Democratic party wish to see the current bill scrapped entirely until a less volatile period arises, this would be a costly mistake. The failure of healthcare reform to gain traction in Congress in 1994 derailed efforts to tackle the issue nationally until 2008; as the percentage of uninsured Americans continues to increase, the issue continues to become more pressing every single day. In addition, the perceived failure of the Democratic party to enact their agenda, even with a 59-vote majority, will...
...outcome in Massachusetts reflects a national stance on the healthcare debate in Washington, namely that 55 percent of Americans now feel that the current bill should be altered to garner more Republican support. Reworking the bill does not mean discarding it entirely. However, it is clear that the public wants to see an end to the fierce partisanship of the deliberation on Capitol Hill. Accordingly, the Democrats should honor the will of the people by opening up the legislation to Republican ideas to achieve a bill with the bipartisan support to ward off a Senate filibuster...
Some Democrats have regarded Brown’s election as akin to a political and moral apocalypse and have proposed several legislative ploys to pass the current version of the bill. We applaud Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s pledge to seat Senator-elect Brown before holding a vote on health care. Any technical exploitation of the limbo after the election would come across as manipulative and undemocratic...