Word: reformer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...interview on Sept. 1, Grassley said, "I've gotten pleadings that we're helping the Democrats get a bill." But, he insisted, "my posture has been to take to the table things that my caucus has said they want health-care reform to be or not be." Among the demands that Grassley says he has made that reflect his commitment to conservative orthodoxy: no rationing of health care, no government-run public option to compete with private insurance, no requirement that employers provide health coverage and an insistence that malpractice lawsuits be curbed...
...feeling that the only way to get a bipartisan agreement is to defeat a Democratic proposal on the first hand, and then the Democrats will come to Republican leadership, and then, at that point, they'll know the only way they're going to get health-care reform is bipartisan," he recently told Iowa reporters...
...than it looks. Though Democrats control Congress, it takes 60 votes to get past a filibuster in the Senate; with the death of Ted Kennedy, they have only 59. And holding the Democrats' own ranks is getting dicier, given the sinking poll numbers for both Obama and his health-reform effort - particularly among women and voters over 65, who worry that Washington's fixes will only hurt the quality of the care they've got. (See more about health care...
...There are procedural ways to get around the 60-vote hurdle, but going that route with a bill as big and complicated as health-care reform would take the Senate Democrats into dark, uncharted parliamentary territory. Among the options they are considering are cutting the bill into pieces and ultimately passing a smaller and less ambitious measure. That, however, sets up a clash with the more liberal House...
...Grassley believes the raucous town meetings of August made it clear that Obama now faces something far larger than mere doubts about health-care reform. "I was expecting a lot of anger, but what really surprised me about the town meetings was the fear that people were expressing - afraid for the country. Health care was a big issue, yes, and it took up most of the questions at the town meetings. But it seemed to me it was the straw that broke the camel's back. People were bringing up the stimulus bill not doing any good and [costing...