Forex: GOP Leaders Question White House Health Care Summit Goals

(RTTNews) - In advance of a planned summit between President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders to address health care reform legislation, several key Republicans are raising questions about the aims of the meeting.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Wednesday renewed his call for Obama to scrap his health care reform proposal in advance of the meeting.

Obama's health care reform plan, revealed on Monday, largely mirrors a version of legislation passed by the Senate over Republican objections. The proposal includes some concessions to the House version, which is considered more liberal by some observers.

McConnell said the White House proposal was a "major disappointment."



"The plan we saw Monday is hardly a starting off point for a bipartisan discussion on common sense reforms," he said. "It's really just more of the same: a massive government scheme with all the flaws of the previous proposals that the American people have already seen and rejected."

McConnell also faulted Democratic leaders for considering a parliamentary maneuver to circumvent the Senate filibuster and bring the proposal up for a majority vote.

The maneuver, known as budget reconciliation, has been used in the past to bring up welfare reform under President William Clinton and a series of tax cuts under President George W. Bush.

"Democrats on Capitol Hill are working behind the scenes on a plan aimed at jamming this massive health spending bill through Congress against the clear wishes of an unsuspecting public," he said. "What they have in mind is a last ditch legislative sleight of hand called reconciliation that would enable them to impose government-run health care for all on the American people, whether Americans want it or not."

McConnell said that the maneuvering made it hard for him to see what the purpose of the Thursday summit would be.

"If the White House wants real bipartisanship, then it needs to drop the proposal it posted Monday ? and start over," he said. "And they need to take this last-ditch reconciliation effort off the table once and for all."

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., the chairman of the House Republican Conference and key lieutenant to House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, also derided the summit as nothing more than theater.

"Tomorrow's summit is looking more and more like a taxpayer-funded media event designed to set up passage of ObamaCare 2.0, and the American people deserve to know it," he said.

Pence echoed GOP calls for Obama to drop the Democratic proposals and start over.

"If the administration and Democrats in Congress were actually willing to scrap the bill and start over with a clean sheet of paper, I'd be all for it," he said. "Instead of scrapping the bill, the president has actually produced his own bigger, worse version of the bills that passed the House and Senate and have been summarily rejected by the American people."

He added, "More spending, more taxes, more government and coverage for abortion."