Does Scott Brown Hear the Words that are Coming Out of His Mouth?
Scott Brown on Obama’s health care proposal, and the possibility of Democrats using a majority-vote reconciliation procedure to pass health care:
If the Democrats try to ram their health-care bill through Congress using reconciliation, they are sending a dangerous signal to the American people that they will stop at nothing to raise our taxes, increase premiums and slash Medicare. Using the nuclear option damages the concept of representative leadership and represents more of the politics-as-usual that voters have repeatedly rejected.
I’m sorry if I missed the esteemed Senator’s logic, but how does using a MAJORITY VOTE procedure damage representative leadership anymore than the filibuster, which Brown supports, which prohibits a massive 59 vote majority from accomplishing ANYTHING without at least 1 vote from the opposing side? Personally I think “representative leadership” is served infinitely better when the MAJORITY of elected officials are allowed to actually represent the people that elected them. Scott Brown and the republicans seem to constantly forget that health care reform, with a public option, was a MAJOR portion of the platform that swept Obama and the democrats into these massive majorities in both houses. So what Scott Brown is essentially saying is that only republican voters deserve “representative leadership.”
In this case we have 59 remaining democrats who supported the health care reform bill, and we will almost definitely get at least a bare majority (50 + VP tie break) on board for reconciliation. So my question to Scott Brown is: isn’t representative democracy damaged more by not allowing this majority of Senators to represent their constituents?
