E-Newsletter Update: Million Strong, Can't Be Wrong!

Monday, September 28, 2009

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Last Wednesday, the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House, one of the two main committees drafting the Democrat-led health care “reform” bill, completed work on their version which includes the government-run “public option.”

Despite overflowing town halls across the country with millions of voices speaking up against the bill, the Senate now writing their own bill without a public option and even President Obama backing away from the government take-over of health care earlier this month, House Democrat Committee Chairman Henry Waxman continues to press on. The fine print maybe changing, but the over-arching goal of a government take-over remains the same.

The Blue Dog Democrats, the so-called “conservative” Democrats who are the coalition likely to define what “reform” looks like in the final version of the bill, are now being picked off one by one by Waxman and in return, allowed them to amend the legislation with more add-on’s, like insurance mandates and regulations.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned up the pressure on House Democrats this week to quickly complete work on the revised version of the health care “reform” bill, so that the Senate’s version (without the public option so thoroughly rejected by the American public) would not dominate the media cycle and direction of the debate. Pelosi is demanding passage by the end of this week.

Many believe, depending on the wording of the public option, that she doesn’t have sufficient votes to pass it.

Pelosi has indicated she will “go as far left as possible” with the House version, which includes her top priority of having a government run “public option” and an income surtax in order to help pay for the multi-trillion dollar piece of legislation.  Embattled Congressman and Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Charles Rangel is championing the tax hike in Congress as “the best way to pay for health care.”

The approach by Speaker Pelosi and liberal Democrats in the House is still the same: more mandates and government bureaucracy in a bill that millions of Americans have already strongly voiced their opposition too. I see it first hand every day in letters, calls, meetings and emails from my own constituents, as well as at a Town Hall meeting I held in Westmoreland County back in August.

It is very difficult for me to understand, as it probably is for you, how Chairman Waxman and Speaker Pelosi intend to make health care cheaper by tacking on more mandates, regulations, bureaucracy, inefficiencies and red tape. The answer is that we can’t.

In the coming days, as the debate over health care “reform” continues in Washington, you can count on me to keep fighting against any government-run “public option,” massive tax hikes, and giant increases in our national debt, which will only burden our children and grandchildren.

Observer-Reporter Editorial

The Washington Observer-Reporter wrote an editorial last week on some of my health care reform ideas outside of a government take-over. Click here to read it.

Sincerely,

Congressman Tim Murphy

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