What the hell's the problem, Boehner? Alan Grayson gave you a great head start -- you asshole...

Why didn't he just say..

You Betcha!

or:

"I'll get back to ya."

That's Palinese for those of you who might not "get it."

Just like Boehner. He just doesn't get it.

Sounds like they haven't done their homework. What again did they get elected to do?

What more do the Republicans have to say on the subject. As Alan Grayson summarized their plan pretty well. "Don't get sick and if you do die quickly."

Anonymous Liberal came up with a good explanation of why the GOP cannot and will not deliver a health reform plan:

The problem the GOP faces is a very simple one: it is impossible to translate their "principles" into a functional plan. This is why they never lifted a finger to address the issue of health care reform during the entire time they controlled the White House and Congress. Indeed, the one health care related bill they passed (the Medicare prescription drug bill) was a massive new--and completely unfunded--government entitlement, something that would seemingly violate any possible list of GOP principles in profound ways.

In the current debate, if you ask a GOP politician what he/she would do to reform health care, you're likely to hear a lot of buzzwords, things like "portability" and "competition across state lines." This all sounds well and good. Competition is generally a good thing and most of us would prefer it if our health insurance wasn't tied to our employment. But when you try to reduce these ideas to policy, the result is a disaster.

[...]

That paralysis is a consequence of the fact that, absent greater government involvement, there really is no way to deal with the uninsured or to reduce systemic costs. If the GOP were to produce a bill and submit it to CBO-like analysis, the results would undoubtedly show that it does almost nothing to address either problem. Indeed, it could very well be shown to make both problems worse. That's why there is no GOP health care plan.

Boner. Heh.

I love the fact that this time, the Republicans have been objectively stupid - almost as stupid as when they opposed the formation of Medicare in the 60s.

In the Clinton Administration, they fought on grounds of a lack of transparency, and specific policy problems with the bill. Mind you, they didn't lift a finger then either to fix the bill or make compromises. But at least their complaints were based in some version of reality.

Here, what were their complaints? Death Panels. They complained we would deny coverage to just Republicans. Every complaint has been laughable, and they have brought nothing to the table.

Even if the plan is watered down for the conservative Democrats, the Democrats do have a vision - a government run health care plan, designed to compete with private insurance. Yeah, maybe weak or strong, maybe now or in the future. But it is an overall vision.

The Republicans? Nada. Zip. Nothing. And they will produce nothing.

Oh, they might trot out another "joke of a budget"-type document. Maybe even make it a full 20 page powerpoint this time. But it will be a joke next to the 1100 page bill the Democrats have tediously worked on.

Now hopefully it isn't too watered down in order to get it past Joe F-n Lieberman. But when this does pass, I can't wait to hear the Republicans scream about how it isn't bipartisan, and woe-is-me the Democrats wouldn't listen to our suggestions. Bring something to the table beatches!

Methinks they're dithering.

As soon as they figure out how to give more taxpayer money to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, I am sure they will have a real good plan.

Republicans have always been about more talk then action. Not that the democrats are better with their outragious liberal beliefs. At least when the Dems say they are going to do something they do it. Republicans only act when pushed or when they can get a clear victory.

Why Steve, are you suggesting that the Republicans intend to unload their "plan" write before the final vote on the Democratic bill in one last ditch effort to hit the brakes on health care reform?

Cuz if you are, I think you're right. This is a "game changer" they'll say, "now the congress will need to take time to go over the GOP proposals. At the very least we need to marry the best of each party's ideas into the final bill. Perhaps we'll have to scrape the Democratic bill all together and start from scratch."

Any bets that will happen? Any one, any one? I'll give you 5 to 1 odds.

We wouldn't want to rush into accepting a GOP plan, now would we?

We need time to (have our lobbyists) study the plan, right?

Steve, despite the objections of some here, you are always writing that the Republicans are the opposition party so OF COURSE they are supposed to oppose anything that the Democrats try to do. Since the Democrats' health care bill has not been finalized, how then can the Republicans offer anything in opposition? It's still a moving target. By your logic, once the Democrat bill is finished, then the Republicans can offer their alternative, which would be diametrically opposed to that of the Democrats. If the Republicans were to offer an "alternative" now, their bill might actually contain something that the final version of the Democrats' bill would have. They can't have that. That's no way to run an opposition.

(I actually think that the Republicans ain't got nothing, but if Steve wants to constantly maintain that the Republicans are SUPPOSED to oppose the Democrats because they're the opposition party, then he shouldn't expect the Republicans to offer up their plan until it's clear what their plan is opposing.)

I actually think that the Republicans ain't got nothing.........
Posted by: josef on October 29, 2009 at 4:19 PM

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding.........

Even their minority leader cannot be civil...
"..."But it seems to me that Democrat [sic] leaders want to rush these bills through Congress before anybody has a chance to read them."

"Democrat"?? Pelosi should start referring to Boehner's gang as "Repubs". Let's see the repub plan. Boehner is clearly an A-hole which speaks well for all he represents.

contra josef, oppositions parties are not supposed to oppose anything the leading party does.

First of all, that would not work when the branches of govt are divided.
Second, their responsibility is to the country, not the party. They should oppose the stupid stuff, and co-opt the good stuff. Dem's won't always have the right ideas.

They have no plan. Their entire process was to figure they could intimidate enough democrats to have the democratic plan fall apart. Nowthat this doesn't seem to be happening, they have to 'wait and see' how the dems will proceed, cause they honestly never thought it would come to this stage.

"( ...if Steve wants to constantly maintain that the Republicans are SUPPOSED to oppose the Democrats because they're the opposition party, then he shouldn't expect the Republicans to offer up their plan until it's clear what their plan is opposing.)"
Posted by: josef on October 29, 2009 at 4:19 PM |

I don't know whether josef is deliberately pretending to misunderstand Mr Benen's regular trope, or whether he's actually unable to understand it.
Mr Benen's theme is that the Publicans are supposed to be a legitimate "opposition party" in exactly the way MobiusKlein described just above: work against those proposals of the majority with which they genuinely disagree, support those proposals with which they agree, and negotiate to find compromises where possible so that the opposition gets at least some of what it wants.
But this past year, and the fight over healthcare-funding-reform in particular, has made it abundantly clear to everyone but the terminally stupid and utterly delusional (ie, everyone but the Publicans, their teabagger base, and the Village media mouthpieces who exist only to support them), that the Publicans are not filling that role, nor attempting to do so.
The data in support of this take two forms.
One is the obvious (to anyone paying attention -- ie, anyone who doesn't rely on the corporate media for their news) fact that the Republicans have spent the last year rejecting proposals that they themselves originated or championed. The "death panels"? The mote around which that odious crystal of deceit was formed was the requirement that the Gov't fund (but not force anyone to actually use) "end-of-life" counseling -- a policy invented by a Publican congresscritter before the current debate even started. The concept of state or regional "co-ops" instead of a national "public option" as a mechanism to provide some tiny degree of competition for insurance firms that otherwise often have NO significant competitor in a given market? That was a Publican proposal -- right up until some Dem's indicated they could support it instead of the public option.
The other, and clearly even more damning, set of data points come in the public pronouncements of the Publicans themselves. Whether it's Sen DeMint helpfully declaring that defeating "Obamacare" would be "Obama's Waterloo," the means by which the Publicans would "break him," or Sen Grassley announcing in advance that he would oppose even a compromise plan incorporating everything the Publicans among the "Gang of Six" might ask for, it's abundantly clear that their task is not to function as anything one might call a proper "opposition party." They exist now only to block everything for which the majority voted in the last election -- even if it damages or destroys American interests and lives in the process.
The sight and sound of self-styled "Americans" joyously cheering the loss of the Olympics to another country was all we need to know about the Publican Party as it now stands -- sorry, slithers.
It also explains why, IIRC, the last poll testing self-identification by party showed the number of people willing to say out loud that they're Publicans is now 20%. At this rate, it can't be too long before people will be more willing to admit to being child molesters than Publicans.
And the best part of all this is that, unlike the way the Publican powers and the corporate media spent 20 years colluding -- with great success -- to taint the word "liberal" with vile associations, this turnabout was entirely the doing of the Publicans themselves. They had full control of the wheels of power for nearly 8 years (and substantial control for far longer on both ends), and the results are horrifically obvious to even the most inattentive of "low-info" voters. They wrecked our economy, created more terrorists than they killed or incapacitated, and ruined our standing in the world -- and only the congenitally-stupid and the most deluded of Fox viewers can be persuaded that this was all somehow the fault of the LIEberals.

I have emailed Boehner to ask where I can read a copy of the republican health care plan, so far no reply. He should be inundated with requests for his plan so that he knows he is being watched.

After all how much planning does it take to say "no" to everything.