Communications

The President might have made a miscalculation when he assumed that his plan represents a consensus among Democrats. Just this morning Dem Rep. Bart Stupak (MI) provided his own assessment of the plan’s popularity:

“There's other problems with this bill. The president has tried  to bridge the house and senate bill, but at least to the house members I’ve talked to, probably 15 or 20 of them in the last 24 hours, they've said there are other problems with this bill. Remember, the house rejected the idea of taxing health insurance plans, we just totally rejected that idea. But yet, that's part of the bill. Parts of this  bill doesn't kick in until 2018. We are saying why are  we passing a bill now that's not going to kick in for another eight, nine years? I mean, we have some real legislative and procedural concerns [about] what the leadership is trying to do with this legislation.” (Bart Stupak, Fox and Friends, 2/24/10)