Senate Democrats’ Health Care Hypocrisy

WASHINGTON, June 20 -- The National Republican Senatorial Committee issued the following news release:

With Obamacare's failure becoming more obvious by the day, Democrats have resorted to grandstanding about procedure instead of admitting that they are fighting to preserve the failed law. But Democrats seem to have forgotten their own actions when they passed Obamacare, writing the bill in secret, and creatively using Senate rules to ram the bill through Congress with no Republican input.

* Last week Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote that Democrats wanted to come together to negotiate on health care, apparently hoping that the American people would forget his talk about all-out war, and promises that Democrats would not work with Republicans on a joint plan to replace Obamacare.

* But Schumer quickly reversed course on his call for bipartisanship yesterday, instead opting for a "take my ball and go home" strategy, vowing to grind Senate business to a halt in an effort to preserve Obamacare.

* Democrats have recently been spewing the talking point that Obamacare was drafted in public, but in 2009, the Washington Post reported that the Senate bill was "worked out behind closed doors," and negotiated "in private."

* Schumer and his allies have complained that Republicans are preparing to pass a health care law along party lines. This line of attack is laughable given their previous promise to oppose all Republican efforts to replace Obamacare. The argument further falls apart when you remember that Obamacare was passed with no Republican support, and that when it became clear that they didn't have 60 votes to pass a revised bill, Democrats utilized the reconciliation process to pass changes to the law by a simple majority.

* And, of course, who can forget Nancy Pelosi's famous statement that "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."

"Senate Democrats have chosen to act like spoiled toddlers rather than offer actual solutions to repair the damage Obamacare has done," said NRSC Communications Director Katie Martin. "If Senate Democrats really wanted to fix our broken health care system, they would drop their petty partisan games and offer actual solutions to the devastation that Obamacare has caused to our health care system."