Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R., Mich.) tells National Review Online that “it will be very difficult for anyone to be convinced that this health-care summit is an honest attempt to negotiate, and whether, from a principled basis, we can accomplish anything, especially when we keep hearing about reconciliation.” The debate process with Democrats, he says, has become “dysfunctional.”
“The White House has its own plan, the House and Senate have a couple of bad plans, and this seems to be an attempt to meld them all together,” McCotter says. “They prefer the government-run statist model that has been outdated since the 1970s. We’re living in a globalized world built upon innovation and a communications revolution. The dinosaur of big government, a Lyndon Johnson model, can’t be applied without detrimental effects. They need to scrap their plan and work with us on a new plan that adopts free-market principles.”
What about President Obama? Will the summit be his moment to bring everyone together? “No,” McCotter says. “It is a bit disingenuous to walk into a room and have Democrats on one side and Republicans on the other, with President Obama sitting front and center, trying to seem above the fray he initiated. It’s staging. It’s an attempt to get more free publicity for the same old plan they’ve tried to jam through the Senate.”