Obama Speech: GOP Demonstration

Last night, Obama promised to listen to the Republicans' ideas on health care reform.

During the health care debate, Obama and his minions have repeatedly made the charge that Republicans have nothing to offer, insisting that they don't want reform. They want the status quo.

Obama said:

If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen. My door is always open.

But know this: I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it's better politics to kill this plan than improve it. I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent what's in the plan, we will call you out. And I will not accept the status quo as a solution. Not this time. Not now.

Rubbish.

The Republicans wanted to show Obama, and the American people, that they do have proposals. Contrary to what Obama and the Democrats say, they do have a plan. They don't want to be shut out of the process of crafting a health care reform legislation. They have ideas.

So they brought their papers to prove it.


Byron York writes:

Tonight some House Republicans are planning to attend the president's address to a joint session of Congress carrying copies of GOP health care bills. If the president says, as he has done on many previous occasions, that opponents of Democratic health care proposals have no plans of their own, those Republicans plan to hold up copies of their bills in protest.

"If the president decides again that he is going to assert that there is no plan on our side, we're going to show him that's not true," says one GOP aide.

Rep. Tom Price, head of the Republican Study Committee, plans to attend tonight's speech carrying a copy of H.R. 3400, the Empowering Patients First Act, which Price, who is a medical doctor, proposed in July. Other Republicans may carry H.R. 2520, which is Rep. Paul Ryan's Patients' Choice Act, and H.R. 3218, which is Rep. John Shadegg's Improving Health Care for All Americans Act. The purpose of bringing the bills to the session -- and of holding them up, if Obama repeats his claim that Republicans have no plan -- is to "show the president that his rhetoric that there are no solutions on the Republican side is false," says the aide. "We've got a plan and we're ready to show it to him -- literally."

I think it was an effective demonstration.

The way Obama and the Democrats have lied about the Republicans is horrible. They've lied over and over again.

Republicans do have proposals.

Obama's rhetoric is false. His bipartisan claims are untrue and unfair. His "status quo" refrain does not apply to Republicans, but he applies it anyway.

Obama really should stop lying to Americans. He's losing more credibility everyday.