REID TARGETS GREGG’S OBSTRUCTIONISM MANUAL…. We learned yesterday that Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) has distributed a three-page memo to his Republican colleagues, reminding them of various procedural tactics they can utilize to obstruct, delay, and undermine the debate on health care. Sam Stein called it “the equivalent of an obstruction manual — a how-to for holding up health care reform.”
This morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) seized on the document: “The good news is that Senate Republicans finally, at long last, have put a detailed plan down on paper. The bad news is that it’s not, as we’d hoped, a plan to make health care insurance more affordable; it’s not one to make health insurance companies more accountable; and it’s certainly not a plan to reverse rapidly rising health care costs and draw down our deficit.
“The Republican plan we’ve waited weeks and months to see … [is] not even about health care at all. The first and only plan Senate Republicans could be bothered to write up is an instructional manual on how to bring the Senate to a screeching halt. We knew that was happening anyway, but they had the audacity to put it in writing.”
I’m certainly pleased to see Reid go after Gregg on this, though it’s probably safe bet to assume the criticism won’t actually deter the GOP tactics.
For that, lawmakers will have to reevaluate the procedural rules that allow obstructionism in the first place. There’s some evidence some Democratic leaders are taking an interest in the subject.
