Snowe’s a Go and so Is the Baucus Health Reform Bill
Tuesday Oct 13, 2009Snowe’s a Go and so Is the Baucus Health Reform Bill in Politics and Legislation
Finance
Committee Chairman Max Baucus kicked things off today declaring, "It's
time to get the job done…This is our opportunity to make history," before
he dipped into some vintage Ben Franklin to caution, “Well done is better than
well said.”
But clearly, Senator Olympia Snowe didn’t see it as an either/or situation. Just before indicating that she would vote yes on the pending health insurance reform bill, she loftily declared, “When history calls, history calls,” concluding with her own cautionary quote (by Longfellow): “Great is the art of the beginning, but greater is the art of the ending.”
Walking on air, Senator Baucus responded that her words would be “long remembered.” Following the debate on the NY Times’ excellent live blog today, we saw a lot of words that will be long remembered — for various reasons. Here are a few gems:
Democratic Senator Kent Conrad: “Doing nothing is not an option.”
Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln: “There is no doubt in my mind that the cost of doing nothing is simply too high.”
Republican Senator Mike Crapo: Well, yeah, I don’t know anyone “who believes we should not do anything.”
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch: “We’ve just been ramming this through.”
Republican Senator Jim Bunning, smacking the bill: “This adds insult to injury.”
Republican Senator John Ensign: “Medicare will go bankrupt” in a decade.
And our favorite, courtesy of Republican Senator Pat Roberts: “We are riding hell for leather into a health care box canyon.”
But at the end of the day, nothing speaks as loudly as the applause that arose in the room when the bill finally passed 14 to 9.
