Gibbs Slams Key GOP Health Care Negotiator: He's Walked Away From Table

The White House on Monday accused one of the key Senate Republicans working on health care legislation of abandoning efforts at crafting a bipartisan bill.

While criticizing the GOP's overall approach to the debate, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs made a point of singling out Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), one of the three Republicans in the Finance Committee's negotiating "Gang of Six."

"It appears that at least in Senator Enzi's case, he doesn't believe that there is a pathway to get bipartisan support, and the president thinks that is wrong," said Gibbs. "I think Senator Enzi has clearly turned over his cards on bipartisanship and decided it is time to walk away from the table."

Gibbs's comments came after Enzi told a Wyoming town hall audience last week that would not compromise with Democrats. And in a radio address on Saturday, Enzi accused Democrats of proposing health care reform that "will actually make our nation's finances sicker without saving you money."

"I think the radio address over the weekend by Senator Enzi, repeating many of the generic Republican talking points that Republicans are using, that have bragged about being opposed to health care, are tremendously unfortunate, but in some ways illuminating," said Gibbs.

In targeting Enzi, Gibbs offered the strongest hint to date that the White House is fed up with the process and progress of bipartisan negotiations in Congress. Asked whether he thought Republicans were negotiating in good faith, he shot back:

"That is a question you should ask them. I think, again, some of the comments that have been made certainly seem to suggest to anybody who reads them that they see to be less interested in the bipartisanship they talked about only a few weeks ago."

The press secretary called the recent slew of largely negative health care-related comments from Republican senators "tremendously unfortunate."

"It looks like Republicans are stepping away from seeking a bipartisan solution," said Gibbs. "It is bad for this town but it's worse for this country."

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) -- another key Republican negotiator in the Senate -- recently sent out a fundraising letter touting his work holding up the President's agenda.

"The simple truth is that I am and always have been opposed to the Obama administration's plan to nationalize health care," he wrote. "Period."

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Comments

[alfatu]

11:29 AM on 09/02/2009

Finally the White House is beginning to see the light and realize that they have been fooled by these so called negotiators. It time to stand up on your own and do what we put you in the White House to do. No more reaching across the aisle because there's no aisle anymore. Go it alone! You have people out here dying everyday because they do not have adequate health care coverage. The traitors mentioned in this article have been exposed so NO MORE GROUP OF SIX. You have a GROUP OF 47 MILLION AMERICANS who are uninsured. Do something for them Mr. President. Please. This is what Senator Kennedy would have wanted you to do -- FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT TO THE FINISH!

[Rmath]

11:51 AM on 09/01/2009

Expose the lies and the lying liars who tell them.

[SteveMD2]

01:15 AM on 09/01/2009

It is all about the $700 billion in profits the insurance companies receive. Often by on the flimsiest of issues denying coverage when the big bills come in. Of course, the heads of these big insurance co's have earned eg $50 million per year. For letting people die in the streets.

Our local neighborhood republican sent around a "stop socialist medical care" letter. I asked my wife how old he is, and she said about the same as I am. I'm 69.

Talk about a hypocrit.!!!!!!

In France, their national medical costs are half the % of GDP we have here. Service is excellent,everyone is covered. Because they have about 150 co-op insurance companies, where the profits all go back to the policy holders.

Switzerland and Japan have excellent medical care, all run under a medicare like system for all. The 25% admin costs of our ins. cos are only a couple % there, because they serve the people,not the special interests. And Docs graduate with no med school bills hanging over their heads.

It is all about greed for power, and especially the republicans catering to their southern white base, for whom the rotten corpse of racism is still smoldering, and being fanned in their effort to take power again, and turn America into a mexico - where only a few % of the people have all the wealth, and the other people are dirt poor. As seen at our borders.

[Hope01]

12:18 AM on 09/01/2009

WE MUST PUT PRESSURE ON THE DEMS, AND THE PRESIDENT TO PASS THE PUBLIC OPTION NO MORE KISSING THE REPUBLICANS BEHIND!

[sph272]

12:35 AM on 09/01/2009

Don't you know that Obama is attempting to eliminate all the elderly through his new health care plan which replaces all the high paid doctors with postal workers. If you don't believe me then just do a search on ask.com for "Obama racist postal workers health-care" and "Justin Timberlake," and"free Pizza." I COMMAND THEE, KEEP THY GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF YE OLD POSTAL SERVICE.

[liberalbug]

01:30 AM on 09/01/2009

Best post I have read in a long time.

[eyeswideopen88]

01:53 AM on 09/01/2009

lol, thank you , I needed that laugh.

[Alexander2791]

01:38 AM on 09/01/2009

the WH is behaving like an infant pissed because the other toddlers refuse to play in the sand with them. This is pathetic or is there a more cynical strategy behind? Like ....you see we tried as best we could but got nowhere. It also shows a n inherent weqaakness in the the president has used/misused the political capital heaped upon him by us the electors last November. This is absolutely depressing.

[Mark Twaine]

12:08 AM on 09/01/2009

Snakes leaving their pit?

[Purcy]

01:11 AM on 09/01/2009

Dems need to start hissing in the republican pit...

[ncmom54]

11:48 PM on 08/31/2009

GOP / Corporate Health Insurance efforts to block reform
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/tag/luntz/

[Troubledwawa]

11:47 PM on 08/31/2009

Good.

Dissolve the gang of six, pick one of the three House bills, and bring it to the floor.

We need a vote so we can all see who the hold outs are.

That's if they'll step into the lime light.

[hernan1333]

11:23 PM on 08/31/2009

what's disappointing is that Prez continues to work with these moles whose sole purpose is to undermine health reform...september is time to act and move forward without rethug support...

[moveyourimage]

11:19 PM on 08/31/2009

Finally! Now Dems, just do what has to be done to GET it done.

[DimBulb2]

10:55 PM on 08/31/2009

Gee
There's a surprise

[magiart1]

10:40 PM on 08/31/2009

GOP and pseudo-Donkeys anti-public option health care rhetoric and bottom line mind-fix - favors the already widely discredited, if not despised and shamelessly repugnant practices and tactics of the so-called 'private health-care providers'...Our Senate is just determined to ignore the peoples' mandate which demands a comprehensive, non-exclusional, unlimitedly responsible public option plan...

Why should We continue to fork out our meager funds to rapacious, 'health care providers' indefinitely -and on their terms? - 'private' terms with private agendas having little to do with providing comprehensive health care? What don't these ignorant, out-of-touch-with-human-reality rich boys understand? Guess its easy NOT to place yourself in the unfortunate one's shoes when you're so far removed from having to suffer similar fates, eh? Is that it?

I'm disgusted with the disingenuous blather, political posturing and foot-dragging you all continually spew - at the behest of 'private interests'...Well, we ALL have private interests...We the people endure it all! We pay for it all! We thus demand what we've so generously paid you all to sign up for when you've attained your ambition-driven offices - the best health care in the Nation - do these private and deregulated corporations GIVE you your medical insurance? No, but their obscene profits buy lawyers, lobbyists, real estate, advertizing, again - on the American peoples' tab - we, who pay you and them for your jobs and medical coverage!

Its so tragic I'm on the verge of a dark laughing fit...

[texasteph12570]

10:12 PM on 08/31/2009

with medicare, medicaid, social security, the post office, and amtrack all broke. why on earth would you think that those corrupt washington players can create for the first time in history a program that is under budget, and effective for all it aims to help. the government cannot run anything effectively.

"To be a socialist means to let the ego serve the neighbour, to sacrifice the self for the whole. In its deepest sense socialism equals service. The individual refrains and the commonwealth demands".
Joeseph goebbels
1. I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. Thomas Jefferson
"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates". Tacitus
"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition". jefferson
“A government that is large enough to supply everything you need is large enough to take everything you have”. Thomas Jefferson
“government is the great fiction, through which everbody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else”. Frederic Bastiat

[robbep]

10:27 PM on 08/31/2009

Your ideology sounds good but it does not solve prblms its like masturbating all you do is fck yourself. The anti government only the strong survive is romanticism at its worst.

[MoreDimensions]

11:06 PM on 08/31/2009

LOL, well stated.

[texasteph12570]

08:09 AM on 09/01/2009

your lack of propriety is a glaring example of why the founders did not want to give the vote to all people, you are obviously not intelligent enough to make an informed decision, and its apparent to most this is not the venue for your childish vulgarities.

"It is certain in theory, that the only moral foundation of government is the consent of the people. But to what an extent shall we carry this principle? Shall we say, that every individual of the community, old and young, male and female, as well as rich and poor, must consent, expressly, to every act of legislation? No, you will say. This is impossible

Is it not equally true, that men in general in every society, who are wholly destitute of property, are also too little acquainted with public affairs to form a right judgment, and too dependent upon other men to have a will of their own? If this is a fact, if you give to every man, who has no property, a vote, will you not make a fine encouraging provision for corruption by your fundamental law? Such is the frailty of the human heart, that very few men, who have no property, have any judgment of their own. They talk and vote as they are directed by some man of property, who has attached their minds to his interest"… . john adams
., The Founders’ Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)

[ChuckDarwin]

10:50 PM on 08/31/2009

Sounds good, except the claim that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Amtrak, and the Post Office are "all bankrupt" is a lie. And don't forget that the Republicans raided Medicare for money for the general fund, and passed the Plan D fiasco on top of it. Yet Medicare remains solvent.

Every so-called "private insurer" today gets a great big fat subsidy from the government in the form of the tax break for employer-provided health care. Just like every so-called private oil company does. Amtrak is competing with untold trillions of dollars of taxpayer money spent building roads for cars to drive on, while its budget is a couple hundred million.

You free-market fundamentalists have no idea what a real free market even looks like, because we've never had one in this country yet. The closest we have had to one was the market in credit default swaps--and look what the vaunted free marketeers did with it: they destroyed the entire economy selling bogus securities to each other.

[bascombe]

09:53 PM on 08/31/2009

tomorrow, Obama will backtrack on Enzi, call him a dear friend and ally, then dismiss the public option as necessary to reform.

[tttony]

10:56 PM on 08/31/2009

Yup. Shameful how these righties act like they care about your health, knowing they can score political points off a man who is trying to do some good.

US needs NHS now!

[Rick Goodner]

01:06 AM on 09/01/2009

You're right... sad is it not?

[wackylady]

09:31 PM on 08/31/2009

I don't want freebies, I am willing to pay for my health care, but premium MUST be a reasonable amount and it MUST provide me with the basics. Right now, I pay every 2 weeks but still cannot afford the copay, of course it doesn't help that the doctors are charging astronomical fees!!!!!!
let's not even talk about lab fees!!
Many European countries believe that providing good health care for their citizens is a moral responsibility. they are not "socialized". private doctors, hospitals etc. No administrative tangles etc.
None of the Insurance company execs or republicans are sufferering, unfortunately it's the regular folk who are just one illness away from financial ruin

[retroredux]

09:54 PM on 08/31/2009

Co pay or the regular price of an office visit is one of the things driving people to seek emergency room help instead of going to a regular doctor. My sister doesn't have insurance and her regular doctors cost just for the office visit is $100! She pays it, even if she has to put it on a credit card (though many don't have that option)

For a single or family whose take home pay may be only a few hundred dollars a week, you can see why with a $100 office visit that have to go to the emergency where they can't turn you away.

Many of the people who went to the RAM medical charity event in LA HAVE insurance-but cannot afford the co-pay. :(

Something has to be done.

[robbep]

10:31 PM on 08/31/2009

and unfortunately it is a lot of regular folk who are fighting like hell for the insurance execs to continue making money off of our illnesses.

[Jezreel]

09:29 PM on 08/31/2009

Per Robert Gibbs: "...but in some ways illuminating,"

What I find most illuminating is that the WH finds Enzi's comments illuminating. No one who's followed the health care debate should find Enzi's or Grassely's comments surprising as this has been the position of the GOP since Mr. Obama took office.

[worldview47]

09:42 PM on 08/31/2009

As if they didn't know it from the be.ginning.....appearances.

Do you like all your co-workers? if not, what are you like with the ones you don't? even your supervisor?

[retroredux]

09:55 PM on 08/31/2009

Gibbs was being sarcastic

[Bloggerrogr]

12:22 AM on 09/01/2009

pre-cisely!

Most of the right wingers fail to grasp that, however.

FWIW