26-Feb-10 11:00 AM CST

President Obama, Listen

The president’s latest plan for health care reform includes more spending, more taxes, and more government control – ideas the American people have repeatedly rejected. Unfortunately it seems that President Obama has not been listening. Yesterday the president said he wanted to sit down with Republicans and Democrats at a health care summit to discuss their ideas. All the president needed to do was listen to the millions of Americans who have said no to a government takeover of health care.

The president and Congressional Democrats should also listen to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) whose Director on Monday indicated he does not have the information necessary to provide adequate or timely estimates of the potentially enormous costs of the president’s plan. How can we have an honest discussion about a health care plan when no one knows how much it will cost? After the summit, Congressional Democrats indicated that they would like to ram a bill through by the end of March. I would urge these Members to postpone any floor action on another health care bill at least until CBO can provide a complete cost estimate for the legislation.

Sadly, the president isn’t even listening to himself. In 2005, when asked about the use of reconciliation to jam a bill through the Senate Barack Obama said, “[W]hat I worry about would be you essentially still have two chambers – the House and the Senate – but you have simply majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that’s just not what the Founders intended.” Given that the American people have repeatedly said “no” to a government takeover of health care and the costs of this plan are unknown, I was disappointed the president failed to commit to not jamming a bill through the Senate under reconciliation. As the president previously noted, using reconciliation is a tacit acknowledgement that the bill lacks bipartisan support and not what our Founders intended.

I was pleased to see Members sit down together yesterday. Conservatives have repeatedly been shut out of the process and finally were given a chance to present our ideas to the president and Speaker Pelosi. I am confident that these fiscally conservative policies can lower health care costs without adding to our already unsustainable debt burden and raising taxes on Americans who are struggling from the recession.

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