Posted on 05/16/2012 3:03:24 AM PDT by Libloather
Dem: House will ride on healthcare
By Mike Lillis and Bob Cusack - 05/16/12 05:00 AM ET
A senior Democrat said Tuesday that the key to winning back the House in 2012 is selling the party’s signature healthcare reform law.
In an interview with The Hill, Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Democrats have “a fighting chance” of grabbing control of the lower chamber.
He added, however, that Democrats “can’t run from [healthcare reform]. You have to go out and say, ‘This is what we did and this is why we did it.’ And I think that you win like that.”
Democrats were pounded on the 2010 campaign trail for supporting the controversial law, as Republicans launched a coordinated attack widely considered a leading factor in the drubbing the Democrats took at the polls that year.
But Clyburn, the third-ranking House Democrat, said Tuesday that his party’s timid defense of the law before those elections — not the law itself — was the reason the Republican criticisms proved so successful with voters.
Two years later, with a number of the law’s benefits firmly in place, Clyburn argued, Democrats can now use the law as an asset for winning back the House in November.
“Healthcare was a big positive that we allowed [Republicans] to turn into a negative. It could be a net positive if you run on it right,” the 71-year-old legislator said.
“People have begun to live with some of these healthcare reforms, and the extent to which members go out and campaign on that, I think, will determine how well we do,” Clyburn said in an hourlong interview in his office in the Capitol. “We lost 2010 because we lost the messaging.”
Clyburn said Democrats need to describe a compelling narrative in defending the healthcare overhaul, urging his colleagues to “talk about personal experiences.”
“I never miss the opportunity to tell people that, ‘Because of Barack Obama, that child born with diabetes no longer has a fear of [not] being able to get healthcare. That woman with breast cancer no longer has a fear of getting [coverage] dropped,’” Clyburn said.
Enacted in March 2010 after a months-long partisan battle, the Democrats’ healthcare reform law was designed to cover tens of millions of uninsured Americans, largely by expanding Medicaid to low-income citizens and requiring most others to purchase private insurance.
The law was assailed by Republicans and conservative groups, who accused Obama and the Democrats of creating an unaffordable coverage system while encroaching on constitutionally guaranteed rights by requiring Americans to buy insurance.
The law also became a rallying cry for the Tea Party, which backed dozens of Republicans in successful runs to win House seats. When the smoke cleared, the Democrats had lost 63 seats and control of the House gavel.
Conservatives were quick to sue the Obama White House over the law — suits that reached the Supreme Court in March. The high court is expected to rule on the law by the end of June.
Clyburn said Tuesday that the Supreme Court’s decision doesn’t concern him too much.
“I have no idea what the Supreme Court’s going to do, but that’s never dictated what I did before,” said Clyburn, a leader in South Carolina’s civil rights movement who is now serving his 10th term in Congress. “I didn’t know what the Supreme Court was going to do when I was sitting in jails back in the 1960s, but that didn’t stop me from doing what I knew to be the right thing to do.”
The Democrats have already made healthcare a huge part of their 2012 platform, but the focus has largely been on criticism of the GOP’s budget, which proposed sharp cuts to Medicare benefits.
Clyburn asserted Tuesday that Medicare can be made sustainable without cuts to healthcare services and hammered Republicans for proposing otherwise.
“If you’re trying to make the government effective, why do you have to be punitive?” he said. “If you’re trying to get a number out of Medicare, why does it have to come out of benefits? That’s what the Republicans are all about and … we have got to show the public what they really stand for.”
Clyburn also took a jab at Obama for the president’s endorsement last summer of a budget grand bargain — a failed negotiation with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) — that would have eroded benefits by raising Medicare’s eligibility age.
Obama might have backed such a plan, Clyburn said, “but that doesn’t mean I would have.”
In late March, Clyburn was among only 38 House members who supported legislation modeled on recommendations from White House fiscal commission Chairmen Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles. That proposal left the door open to some Medicare benefit cuts.
On Tuesday, the Palmetto State Democrat defended that vote, saying his vote was not an endorsement of every provision of the sweeping plan.
“It seems to me you can adopt the principles of Simpson-Bowles without adopting every single part of it,” he said. “We could have substituted some parts of it.”
SCOTUS is almost certain to either gut or kill Obamucare next month. What then?
Pelosi Logic...got to approve it, to read what is in it, to then learn that what was in it was unconstiututional all along.
.....and we actually pay these people.
If that Obamacare was sooooooo great, why did the “Rats” have to sneak in under the door in the dark of night and then pass the bill before anyone could read it? It was a
sham to start with and should be completely revoked. Enough of the BS already. Scrap it all and the Rats with it..
I doubt most Democrats won't mention Obama Care
If the opposition had a nominee, instead of a Romney, Hussein would be back on his heels and bleeding from his nose and ears. Obamacare = Enslavement and our guy is silent!
We know what they did, and we know why they did it.To get the entitlement vote.
Problem is those who get the benefits, arent the ones who have to pay for it.
246 new agencies. AGENCIES folks. 246 new sponsors of thousands of regulations. Thousands of Government employees.
Thousands more people sucking up health care dollars with less doctors available.Ratinong now a law. new taxes tied in.
Who ever wrote this thing created a monster.
It has to go.
“I have no idea what the Supreme Court’s going to do, but that’s never dictated what I did before,” said Clyburn, a leader in South Carolina’s civil rights movement who is now serving his 10th term in Congress. “I didn’t know what the Supreme Court was going to do when I was sitting in jails back in the 1960s, but that didn’t stop me from doing what I knew to be the right thing to do.”Yeah - and if the facts and the law turn out to favor him and not “Tea and Skittles” Martin, that wouldn’t stop you from advocating “the right thing to do” to George Zimmerman, either. Or to me or any other white man, for that matter - Zimmerman is just a proxy for all of us.
Facts don’t matter when “the right thing to do” is in play.
Too bad the “R” candidate cannot make this an issue, since he authored it.
Yes.. dems should run on Obamacare..
This, from Clyburn, the occupant of one of the safest dem seats in the country.
But hey! Knock yer socks off, dems!!
These people HATE the idea of America and have done more than enough damage and will continue their destruction until we kick their sorry asses out!
I don't know exactly why, but America has to go through these selfish, totally assbackward stages sometimes.
I was all excited, then I saw it was Clyburn. Clyburn is simply not of the Planet Earth. Other Senators may be a little more grounded. This is a report on the ramblings of a drooling fool.
You mean after we all finish the first round of drinks or the second?
It's been 3 long, long years, hasn't it? I tell you if the SCOTUS does toss Nazicare, I will be celebrating it excessively just because we've been starved for good news for so long.
That being said, I'm not counting on SCOTUS.
Nor romney, he wrote the damn thing.
I’m just going by the comments the justices made. With Keagan recused, and Sotamayer telling the adminstration their argument “isn’t selling”, I think at least the mandate is toast.
As for what happens next, I predict the RATS try to regroup by claiming that Obamucare would have fixed everything from grampa’s cancer to the national debt, if those mean conservative justices hadn’t killed it.
If you couldn’t sell Obamacare in 3 years, you sure as heck aren’t going to sell it before November. Especially after the SCOTUS rips it to shreds in a few weeks.
Once again, Clyburn has been smoking something.
When the hell is the GOP going to make an issue out of the supposed hearings on CSpan etc etc about healthcare that Obama promised
Instead it was rammed through at night with no hearings in order to save Obama’s Presidency ( as if that is a legitimate reason )
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.