Today in Washington, D.C. - Jan 7, 2011 - Will Dems Become "The Party Of No" On The Reforms Americans Voted For?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has put the Senate in recess until January 24^th in order to hold open the first legislative day while Democrats attempt to negotiate among themselves support for partisan changes some want to make to filibuster rules.  Democrats claim that rules can be changed with a simple majority vote on the first legislative day, even though Senate rules require a 2/3rds vote to change them.  Reid knows the rules in the Senate continuous body with each senator having six year terms and with 2/3 of the Senate remaining as incumbents with only 1/3 of the Senate seats up for election every two years.

Whereas all the seats for the US House are up for election at the same time every two years and the House body begins anew every two years.

Today the new House Republican majority is holding votes on a rule setting up debate and votes next week on a simple bill to repeal President Obama’s unpopular health care law. Republicans heard loud and clear the message from the voters that the health care takeover Democrats jammed through Congress needs to be repealed and replaced. H.R. 2, the “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.” was introduced on Jan 5th.

Though Democrats have attempted to claim the law is popular, poll after poll shows the public continues to disapprove of it, and a plurality supports repealing it altogether, as a new Gallup poll shows today. Forty-six percent of respondents say they would want their representative in Congress to vote “yes” to repeal the health care law. That includes 78% of Republicans, a plurality of independents (43%), and nearly a quarter of Democrats.

Yet Democrats in Congress are stubbornly protecting their massive expansion of government control and regulation over health care. As Kimberley Strassel explains in her Wall Street Journal column today, in the new Congress, Senate Democrats are about to wear the mantle of “The Party of No” that they previously tried so hard to stick to Republicans. Strassel writes, “This week’s news is the incoming House GOP majority and its sweeping reform plans. Next week’s news (and the news for most weeks thereafter) will likely be the many ways [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid [D-NV] goes about killing those reforms. Day after day, week after week, the House will be sending to the Senate bipartisan bills to cut spending, to make smart fixes to ObamaCare, and to rein in the federal government. And day after day, week after week, Mr. Reid will likely be cementing his party’s reputation for blocking, obstructing and deterring nearly every one of them.”

Strassel elaborates, “Democrats were unable to tar Republicans as the ‘Party of No’ for a simple reason: The American public wanted the GOP to halt the Obama agenda. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell famously noted, ‘It depends on what you are saying ‘no’ to.’ In this case, Mr. Reid—the public face of his party—will be saying no to exactly the reforms Americans voted for in the midterms.”

At a news conference yesterday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell emphasized this point. “We anticipate that the House of Representatives are going to pass a lot of legislation that virtually all of my Members are going to be enthusiastic about.” He wondered aloud if Senate Democrats “are going to be more interested in cooperating with us in trying to advance an agenda that’s going to come out of the House of Representatives that we think is going to be largely favored by the American people?”

It’s clear that Americans sent a message that Congress needs to focus on creating jobs, reining in spending and debt, and stop growing the size of government. Repealing and replacing the Democrats’ unpopular health care law is a good first step on all of those goals.

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Tags: Washington, D.C., US House, US Senate, rules, Repeal the Bill, government health care, Obamacare, jobs To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!