POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

House Democrats: A tale of two mendacities.

Today we bring you a double-your-pleasure example of the mendacity of the House Democrats. The first is an outgrowth of last week's election of Bill Owens in NY-23. He ran on a platform of being opposed to the public option, medicare reduction, taxing health care benefits as well as any increases in middle-class taxes whatsoever. But once sworn in, Surprise!, he flip flopped on all of these positions in what has to be a record even for politicians:

Owens indicated in a press release released shortly afterwards that he was now in favor of the the "Affordable Healthcare for America Act" bill in direct contrast to his earlier position during the election campaign.

According to Politico.com, Mr. Owens assured voters that he felt the public option had no place in the health care reform bill.  Contrary to that position, Mr. Owens now indicates that he intends to vote in favor of the bill even though it now contains a public option.

Mr. Owens also indicated during his campaign that he was firmly opposed to cutting Medicare benefits, taxing health care benefits, and increased taxes on the middle class in any way as you can see clearly in the screenshot below, taken directly from Mr. Owens' campaign website.

Screenshot of Owens website courtesy gouverneurtimes.com

[click to enlarge]

The House Health reform bill contains sections that cut Medicare benefits, tax existing health care benefits, and increases taxes on the middle class, yet Mr. Owens stated today that he will now vote in favor of those things contrary to what he had promised the voters of NY's 23rd Congressional District that he would vote against.

Which brings us to the second high level example.  Implying that the Stupak amendment to the house health care bill was merely a necessary political connivance, Representative Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.) says she expects that language to be stripped from any final bill constructed by the conference committee:

“I am confident that when it comes back from the conference committee that that language won't be there,” Wasserman Schultz said during an appearance on MSNBC. “And I think we're all going to be working very hard, particularly the pro-choice members, to make sure that's the case.”

The amendment, offered by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), won the support of Republicans and dozens of centrist Democrats in the House, but revealed a deep divide in the Democratic caucus over abortion.

It’s not clear how the abortion debate could impact a final vote in the House on the healthcare bill, but it could be difficult for many of the centrists who supported Stupak’s amendment to vote for a healthcare bill that did not include his language.

See Cap'n Ed's post on this matter for a more complete discussion of the vote on Saturday night, and why in his opinion it was the right thing to do for the Republican caucus to avoid the temptation to resort to parlaimentary shenanigans and put the house Democrats on the spot by voting "present" on the Stupak amendment; asserting that by maintaing their integrity on the issue, it almost compells house Democrats to vote against a final bill from which Stupak's measure is stripped.

So it seems that the Republicans are not the only party having ideological internecine struggles.  made worse still by MoveOn.org's declaration of intent to use 3.6 million dollars recently raised to unseat any Democrat who doesn't fall in line and vote for Obamacare-as directed !

Rocketman