My Attempt at Writing Sen. Lincoln’s Press Release for Tomorrow
My political intuition tells me that Sen. Blanche Lincoln will vote for the motion to proceed on the Senate Health Care Bill when it comes to the floor tomorrow. I thought I would go ahead and take a crack at what her statement will be following her vote. Keep in mind this is totally from my imagination and is NOT REAL. However, I bet I am pretty darn close.
Today, I cast my vote to allow the United States Senate to begin debate on The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act. I was pleased that the Senate leadership honored my request to allow 72 hours to review this bill before the first procedural vote was cast. I spent that time studying the bill with consultation from my staff as well as Arkansans back home on how the bill will impact our state.
My vote today on the motion to proceed with debate should in no way be interpreted as an indication of my support for the final passage of the bill. I still have serious concerns about how this legislation will affect Arkansans. This has been and will continue to be my primary concern throughout this debate.
One concern I have is that the bill does not adequately provide affordable health care for Arkansans living in rural communities. This is why I plan to offer the Rural Community Health Care Amendment now that this process has begun. This Amendment will provide increased funding for our local rural community health care centers that are so vitally important for these rural areas of Arkansas. In addition, this will provide great efficiency in our health care system by addressing health care needs sooner rather than later.
In spite of my concerns on the bill, we cannot be afraid to start the process of discussing how we can work together to fix our broken health care system. No one can deny the fact that we have serious problems in providing affordable health care to everyone. My vote today is a vote to for the Senate as a whole to take this next important step. I hope that we can work together in a bipartisan manner to improve this bill so that we can bring relief to the millions of Americans that so critically needed our assistance.
November 20th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Did you forward this to Katie?
November 20th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
This was so funny, it made me fart.
November 20th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Yup, it is a done deal. Lincoln dances the “Texas two-step” by voting in favor of proceeding on the bill, leaving her to “vote against” the bill itself (while 51 other Ds send it to Conference).
But Lincoln did get what she wanted. The Senate version is not simply pro-abortion: rather it compels GOVERNMENT FUNDING of Abortion for the first time in history (and over-riding the Arkansas Constitutional prohibition on such spending). Make no mistake, this was one of the concessions to Lincoln, the Ds just can’t talk about it publicly.
Very sad; and sad to see our Country going down this road to much higher taxes.
Didn’t these folks get it when Clinton’s 1993 tax increases resulted in changing the House to R in 1994?
November 20th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
to republicany for most people try again.
November 20th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
That probably strikes the “right tone” for her press release. You could make a living writing generic press releases for politicians. One minor error: the word “interrupted” should be “interpreted” in the second paragraph.
November 20th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
AB – Thanks. I have also thought I had a knack at saying nothing well.
November 20th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
You nailed it Jason. Hers will be virtually indistinguishable from yours. I’ll be glad when we have a Senator who actually represents Arkansas!
November 20th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Jason,
You nailed it. That is exactly what she will say. It will be very interesting to compare this to her release tomorrow night. It is sickening to see them hiding their vote to help pass this as the need to have a “debate”. Hasn’t this debate been going on for several months? What else needs to be said?
Tim
November 21st, 2009 at 2:48 pm
[...] at 2:30 this afternoon. But I can’t help but point out how similar her comments were to my prediction yesterday. Maybe she is a Tolbert Report [...]
November 21st, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Fox just announced she is voting yes.
November 21st, 2009 at 3:34 pm
if anyone had watched her on C-span during the Finanace comm. markup, you could have predicted this action.. she is trying to spin the socialist mantra of rising cost etc.. I bet she has not even read the full context of this tome.. first sentence is:
To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees, and for other purposes.
does this sound like health care??..
November 25th, 2009 at 11:15 am
[...] It is certainly no surprise to anyone that Lincoln had her mind made up. She met with Harry Reed only minutes before he released his bill on Wednesday, when he also said the vote would be coming in 72 hours just as Lincoln had asked. I predicted Lincoln’s Saturday move on Friday with my mock press release. [...]