"When I say jump, you say, 'How high?'"
That would be Chuck "Don't Let Them Pull the Plug on Grandma" Grassley. Why does Obama want Republican approval so badly? Protective cover for the watered-down version he promised Big Pharma and the insurance companies?
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The lead Republican senator in bipartisan health care negotiations said Tuesday that he urged President Obama this month to make clear he would accept a bill without a government-funded public insurance option.
"I told the president then that he needed to make public whether or not he could sign a bill that didn't have a public option in it," Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said on Radio Iowa. "He didn't have to take a position against a public option, but would he sign a bill that wouldn't have a public option in it, and I thought a statement from him would be very helpful."
Grassley and the five other bipartisan negotiators met with the president on August 6 to discuss their efforts toward a health care bill that can pass the Senate Finance Committee in September, when Congress returns from its August recess.
On Saturday, Obama said the "public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform."
Then on Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said a public option is "not an essential element" of overhauling the health care system.
Why is President Obama so much more concerned with what Republicans want? It's a mystery!
