Image 01

Posts Tagged ‘Health Care Summit’

Shocker: Obama Surrenders, Substantially Scales Down Plan on Eve of Summit; UPDATED 2X: White House Furiously Denies WSJ Story, Hoyer Confirms WSJ Story

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

A Pensive Barack Obama Looks On As the White House's Plans to Advocate Scaled Down Health Care Plan Leak, Detailing a Smaller 250 Billion Dollar Health Care Plan as Monday's 950 Billion Dollar Proposal Looks Unlikely to Pass Congress on the Eve of the Health Care Summit

In an incredible development literally hours before the much-hyped health care summit is to begin between President Obama and Congressional Republicans, the Obama Administration signaled its intent to move forward with a much smaller, scaled back health care plan spending perhaps 250 Billion Dollars over 10 years instead of the near Trillion a year proposed by the present Obama Health Plan as released on Monday. The Wall Street Journal reports:

President Barack Obama will use a bipartisan summit Thursday to push for sweeping health-care legislation, but if that fails to generate enough support the White House has prepared the outlines of a more modest plan.

His leading alternate approach would provide health insurance to perhaps 15 million Americans, about half what the comprehensive bill would cover, according to two people familiar with the planning.

It would do that by requiring insurance companies to allow people up to 26 years old to stay on their parents’ health plans, and by modestly expanding two federal-state health programs, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, one person said. The cost to the federal government would be about one-fourth the price tag for the broader effort, which the White House has said would cost about $950 billion over 10 years.

Officials cautioned that no final decisions had been made but said the smaller plan’s outlines are in place in case the larger plan fails.

Such a move would disappoint many Democrats, including Mr. Obama. They have worked for more than a year to pass comprehensive legislation like the plan the president unveiled Monday, which would cover the bulk of the 46 million uninsured people in the U.S., set new rules for health insurers and try to control spiraling health-care costs.

The last reporting from the WSJ above could be the understatement of the decade, as many Democrats will be much more than disappointed. The left is already disappointed by the White House’s declaration yesterday that the public option was dead, and this scaled back, much smaller plan leaked just hours before the health care summit is sure to infuriate those on the left who have been agitating tirelessly for a comprehensive health care reform package along the lines of Monday’s Obama Health Plan. Indeed, should Obama actually fallback on the smaller plan as the WSJ suggests, such a development is certain to lead to questions about the consistency and effectiveness of Obama’s strategy on health care reform and much consternation in the left wing new media about the incompetence of his execution since the health care debate began in the Spring of 2009.

Looking back, if Obama had been agreeable to the type of plan he’s apparently contemplating now back in the Spring of 2009, health care reform would have passed with 80 votes in the Senate and Obama would have done a lot to prove his bipartisan bona fides. Instead, after nearly a year of advocating a strongly partisan health plan, Obama may now be signaling he will take what he can get in a scaled down bill, yet the damage to the Democratic Party and the Obama brand as inflicted since the Spring of 2009 by the health care debate will remain.

UPDATE:  The Washington Post’s Obama advocate Ezra Klein and the Huffington Post report that the White House is furiously denying the Wall Street Journal’s report that a scaled back plan is under consideration. Klein’s report:

The Wall Street Journal has a splashy piece this evening on the White House’s plan B for health-care reform: a fallback approach that would cover 15 million people, do less to reform the system and cut costs, and carry a lower price tag. Call it health-care lite.

Plan B has been around for awhile. In August, discussions raged in the White House over whether to pare back the bill. The comprehensive folks won the argument, but people also drew up plans for how you could pare back the bill, if it came to that. More thinking was done on this in the aftermath of the Massachusetts election, when Rahm Emanuel and some of the political folks again argued for retreating to a more modest bill. As you’d expect, these conversations included proposals for how that smaller bill would look.

At this point, I could quote some White House sources swearing up and down that that’s all this is. A vestigial document that’s being blown out of proportion by a conservative paper interested in an agenda-setting story. They’re furious over this story. None of the quotes are sourced to the White House — not even anonymously — raising questions that the whole thing is sabotage. But it hardly matters. There’s no Plan B at this point in the game, and most everyone knows it.

UPDATE #2: Ed at Hotair picks up this Hill piece quoting House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer stating this morning before the summit that a scaled back bill along the lines of the one described by the WSJ last night is on the table:

Hoyer, the second-ranking House Democrat, said the president would have to look at a fallback proposal if the current proposals before Congress weren’t able to muster the votes to pass.

“I think the president’s open to that,” Hoyer said during an appearance on CNBC, cautioning that the president would clearly prefer to see the comprehensive bills pass…

“Obviously, the president has indicated he wants to have a comprehensive bill,” Hoyer said. “But the president, like all of us, understands that in a democracy, you do the possible.”

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

GOP Demands Obama Invite Dissenting Dem. Stupak on Eve of Summit

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

House GOP Leader John Boehner Threw Obama a Curveball With a Demand for an Invite for Democratic Dissenter Bark Stupak to the Health Care Summit Tomorrow

In an attention-grabbing move on the eve of tomorrow’s day-long health care summit between Obama and the GOP, House GOP Leader John Boehner has issued a demand, via letter, that Obama invite Democratic House Member Bart Stupak (D-Mi.). Stupak yesterday called the Obama Health Plan, as released on Monday, “unacceptable” because the “President’s proposal encompasses the Senate language allowing public funding of abortion.” A key portion of Boehner’s letter:

I write today to respectfully ask that you invite Rep. Stupak to participate in the February 25 health care summit so that the will of the American people – and that of a bipartisan majority in the House – on the critical issue of life will be appropriately represented during the discussion.

Regrettably, millions of Americans are already deeply skeptical about the February 25 summit. They have noted with disappointment the decision by the White House to use the existing legislation as the starting point for the discussion – despite the fact that the current bills are opposed by a majority of the American people – rather than starting the discussion with a clean sheet of paper. They have noted with consternation the White House decision to exclude governors and state legislators representing states that will bear the heaviest burdens if the current legislation is enacted. Including Representative Stupak in the February 25 discussion, by contrast, would send a signal that the White House respects the views of a majority of Americans and a bipartisan majority of the House on the critical issue of life.

Boehner’s letter also mentions the GOP’s request earlier this week that Governors be invited to the health care summit, and such request was also denied by the White House according to Politico today:

The White House has denied a request by Hill Republicans to include governors at tomorrow’s Blair House health care summit, according to a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

“The White House has apparently decided not to allow any of America’s governors to attend the health care ‘summit’ tomorrow,” wrote Boehner spokesman Michael Steel in an email.

“We are disappointed to announce that the White House has advised Leader Boehner that its expectation is that congressional leaders will appoint only Members of Congress as their representatives at the summit, on the grounds that the discussion is ‘about legislation.’ … [H]e is disappointed the White House has excluded our nation’s governors and state legislators from the summit.”

A White House spokesman hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

Obama faces a difficult choice in whether to agree to the GOP’s desire for Stupak’s attendance. If Obama denies the request, part of the narrative over the next twenty four hours will be the White House’s exclusion of Stupak. If Obama accepts the request, than Stupak’s “unacceptable” comment and likely more comments from Stupak about abortion will be part of the media reporting. As Obama has already denied the request for Governor attendance, our guess is that Obama will simply ignore this latest GOP demand regarding Stupak and hope the issue of abortion funding via Obamacare gains little traction in the coming days.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Obama Reconciliation Strategy Rallies Moderate Democrats

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Democratic Senators are Rallying Around Obama's Health Plan and the Use of the Reconciliation Process

In the wake of the release of the 11 page Obama Health Plan, which clearly envisions the use of the parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation, moderate Democratic Senators who are on record opposing the use of reconciliation for Obamacare are now reversing themselves. Senators Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Ben Nelson (D-Ne.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who all previously stated their opposition to the reconciliation procedure, are signaling that their opposition to reconciliation is now waning. Additionally, some House Democrats who previously opposed the Senate bill are also softening their opposition. Both House and Senate Democrats appear both impressed by Obama’s release of his own plan as well as accepting the Obama Administration’s argument that a bad bill is better than no bill for Democratic electoral prospects in November 2010. Obama’s strategy to paint the GOP as obstructionists is also helping garner Democratic support for the use of reconciliation. Indeed, as Thursday’s health care summit approaches, the continual White House assertions of GOP intransigence on health care appear to be paying off by providing moderate Democrats political cover to abandon their prior anti-reconciliation stances.

Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown reports:

An idea that seemed toxic only weeks ago — using a parliamentary tactic to ram health reform through the Senate — is gaining acceptance among moderate Democrats who have resisted the strategy but now say GOP opposition may force their hands.

The implications of the subtle shift among this small group of centrist senators could mean the difference between success and failure for health care reform — giving Democrats a potential road map for passing a bill that had been left for dead after the Massachusetts Senate defeat.

That mood in the Senate was matched Tuesday by a growing momentum for President Barack Obama’s health care proposal in the House, where Democrats were beginning to coalesce around the view that passing a flawed bill is better than passing none at all.

These shifts couldn’t come at a better time for Obama ahead of Thursday’s health care summit. The White House has signaled he’s prepared to use reconciliation, which would require just 51 votes to pass health reform.

The comments also seemed to reflect the early soundings of a Democratic strategy for selling the public on the tactic, especially if no Republicans sign on to Obama’s plan after the summit: The GOP made us do it.

“Obviously, if the minority is just frustrating the process, that argues for taking steps to get the public’s business done,” said Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who was one of the leading voices against the procedure after the Massachusetts election, calling it “very ill-advised.”

“At the same time … Republicans would probably shut the place down, but you could argue they are doing that anyway,” Bayh said.

Bayh’s remarks Tuesday came a day after Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) cited Republican obstructionism as a reason why she could embrace the parliamentary maneuver to pass health care reform. Last month, she said she was leaning against reconciliation.

“I’m staying open to see how these negotiations go forward,” Landrieu said. “I’ve not generally been a big supporter, but the Republican Party, the leadership, has really been very, very, very disingenuous in this process.”

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said he doesn’t prefer reconciliation, but it may be the only way.

“I’d like to see as many votes as possible,” he said. “But at the end of the day, with the obstructionism going on at the level that it is, I’m more interested in what’s in the package than I am in the process of how many votes it takes to get it through.”

To be sure, the hints on reconciliation do not signal any kind of ironclad commitment. Democrats remain hesitant about using the procedure, fearful that Republicans will be successful in convincing voters that it is an end-run around the normal legislative process.

However, it is a mixed bag for Democrats in the past few days, as shown by Steny Hoyer’s comments earlier today that “[w]e may not be able to do” a comprehensive health care reform bill. Some moderate House Democrats also voiced disapproval with Obama’s new strategy, including Blue Dog leader Heath Shuler (D-Pa.) and Jason Altmire (D-Pa.). Considering today’s shift of moderate Democratic Senators towards supporting Obama’s plan to use reconciliation, the tougher battle for Obama may now lie with finding 218 votes from the House of Representatives, especially as perhaps as many as 60 Democratic House members are facing defeat in November 2010. The Associated Press outlines the importance of Thursday’s summit and the uncertainty of House passage:

If Obama fails on a comprehensive health care overhaul where Bill Clinton and other presidents failed before him, the chance won’t come around again anytime soon.

The whole endeavor will now rise or fall on Obama’s ability to sell his plan at the summit Thursday, and the reaction from lawmakers and the public in the days ahead.

Some rank-and-file Democrats were openly skeptical that the White House and congressional leaders could pull it off. Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., a moderate who opposed the health legislation when it passed the House, questioned whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi could hang on to the votes that allowed her to get the bill through 220-215 in November. Since then a couple of Democrats have left the House, and Pelosi may also lose votes from anti-abortion Democrats who oppose the less restrictive abortion language in the Senate bill, which Obama kept in his plan.

“Is she going to be able to hold everybody that was for it before?” Altmire asked. “What about the marginal members in the middle who got hammered over this vote and would love a second chance to perhaps go against it?”

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

White House Spokesmen Lie, Claim No GOP Health Care Plan Exists

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer writes this morning that "Will the Republicans Post Their Health Plan… and When?" despite the GOP's posting of a health plan in October 2009

Despite the indisputable fact that the Republican Party posted its health care plan on gop.gov in October 2009, and the fact that the White House website itself has a link to the GOP plan, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer authored a blog post at 5am this morning smearing the GOP for not providing a health care plan prior to the vaunted health care summit set for Thursday. Yesterday, lead White House spokesman made a similar statement, imploring the GOP to post their plan online.

One can only wonder if Pfeiffer and Gibbs planned this one-two misleading punch in advance or if it is just a comedy of errors. Politico’s Chris Frates sets the record straight yesterday, after Gibbs’ comment, regarding the availability online of the GOP health care plan, entitled “Gibbs may need to read the White House website more closely”:

During today’s press briefing, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said he hoped that Republicans would post their reform plans online.

“The president posted ideas of his on the White House website today. We hope Republicans will post their ideas either on their website, or we’d be happy to post them on ours, so that the American people could come to one location and find out the parameters of what will largely be discussed on Thursday,” Gibbs said.

Turns out the House Republicans’ plan has been online since October and already has its own link on the White House website. The White House encourages readers to “read more about House and Senate ideas from both parties on their websites.” The link sends readers to a House GOP website that includes a one-page summary sheet and the legislative text of their proposals.

Pfeiffer’s headline is truly Orwellian, considering the fact that the GOP plan has been online since October 2009: “Will the Republicans Post Their Health Plan… and When?” The mainstream media, other than this lone article by Frates at Politico, appears to be giving Pfeiffer and Gibbs a pass on their explicitly false and misleading statements about the alleged lack of a posted GOP health care plan. Instead, ABC’s Rick Klein calls Pfeiffer’s post a “dare” while ignoring the false and misleading statements, and Time’s Mark Halperin simply notes that the White House “pounces” with the Pfeiffer post.  The Hill.com’s Michael O’Brien goes so far as to spin the obviously false and misleading statements by Pfeiffer and Gibbs on behalf of the White House (Dems “forced GOP Leaders’ hand” to submit the House bill, the GOP Senators “never crafted” a plan because it relies on “series of piecemeal bills and amendments submitted by different senators”). Of course, no Republicans are sought out and quoted in response to the Gibbs or Pfeiffer false and misleading claims by the mainstream media authors listed above.

Not a single article by any mainstream media organization (besides Frates’s article above) notes that the GOP has had a health care plan posted online at gop.gov since October 2009, let alone mention that the Whitehouse.gov website has posted a link to it. Instead, the media is pushing the narrative that the the White House has instructed them to push: The GOP has no plan, and the White House desperately wants to cut a bipartisan deal, but cannot because of the GOP’s lack of a plan. It is amazing to see the American media so compliant and agreeable to repost Obama’s talking points, especially considering the indisputable facts disprove those talking points explicitly.   This failure of the media to report facts (GOP plan posted since October 2009, White House site has link to same), and report of talking points instead (Pfeiffer and Gibbs: Where’s the GOP plan?), on this issue is likely foreshadowing of the coverage we’ll see of Thursday’s health care summit, as it appears the establishment media is fully on board with Obama in his last ditch push to ram Obamacare through Congress.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Obama Proposes Passing Partisan Health Care Plan Via Reconciliation Despite Bipartisan Opposition

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Democratic President Barack Obama, and Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid, signaled this morning the pathway for the final Democratic push for the passage of Obamacare: the reconciliation process

Three days before the highly publicized health care summit, billed by President Obama and Democrats as an opportunity for bipartisan negotiations regarding the provisions of a potential health care overhaul, the White House signaled its intent to move forward with a $950 billion dollar Democrats-only bill that can garner, at most, a bare 51 vote majority in the United States Senate. Indeed, eight Democratic Senators (including Lieberman) have already gone on record opposing the use of reconciliation to ram through the Obamacare package.   Despite Obama’s prior pledges of bipartisan negotiations with the GOP and this morning’s bipartisan rhetoric from the White House, the fact is that the only bipartisanship associated with health care reform is the bipartisan opposition in the House to Obamacare (39 Democratic “no” votes) and the bipartisan opposition to the use of reconciliation to pass Obamacare through the Senate.

The substantive content of this morning’s latest White House version of Obamacare is essentially the same plan negotiated between the President, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the days leading up to Republican Scott Brown’s January 2010 election to the Senate from liberal Massachusetts and the White House roadmap contemplates the use of the reconciliation process in the Senate so as to avoid the need for a 60 vote majority:

“This is our take on the best way to merge the House and Senate bills,” a senior White House official told ABC News. The official said the proposal was “informed by our conversations from negotiations” before Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was elected, thus depriving Democrats of their 60-vote supermajority, as well as from subsequent discussions.

“We thought it would be a more productive meeting if we brought one consolidated plan to use as jumping-off point,” the official said. “We hope the Republicans do the same.”

By posting their proposals in such a form, White House officials are providing a roadmap for how they think they can best pass health care reform in the new post-Massachusetts Senate race reality: have the House pass the Senate bill, then use reconciliation rules requiring only a majority Senate vote to pass the “fix” to make the bill more palatable.

In the conference call with reporters this morning accompanying the disclosure of the latest iteration of Obamacare, White House officials explicitly stated they intend to use reconciliation to pass Obamacare without any GOP Senate votes:

In the course of unveiling Obama’s new health reform proposal on a conference call with reporters this morning, White House advisers made it clearer than ever before: If the GOP filibusters health reform, Dems will move forward on their own and pass it via reconciliation.

The assertion, which is likely to spark an angry response from GOP leaders, ups the stakes in advance of the summit by essentially daring Republicans to try to block reform.

“The President expects and believes the American people deserve an up or down vote on health reform,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said on the call.

Accordingly, it appears that the Obama Administration has settled on pursing the use of the Senate reconciliation process, instead of normal order which would require a 60 vote majority, to pass the most far-reaching reform of the health care system in our nation’s history. Indeed, the “package is designed to help us [use reconciliation] if the Republican party decides to filibuster health care reform,” stated White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer.

The new Obamacare policy summary
and the conference call with reporters strongly indicate that little, if any, substantive discussions will occur at Thursday’s health care summit as the Democrats have now settled on the use of reconciliation as the pathway to final passage of Obamacare. The GOP’s incremental ideas such as allowing the purchase of insurance across state lines, significant tort reform and the use of risk pools for uninsurable Americans with preexisting conditions are nowhere to be found in this morning’s announcement nor in the present Democratic bills in the Senate and House and are essentially inconsistent with the comprehensive, government-centered, Democratic health care reform plans. Furthermore, in a move apparently designed to paint the GOP as pro-insurance, Obama also proposed substantial new federal price controls over the cost of health insurance as part of this morning’s summary.

The above-described White House posture this morning stands in stark contrast to their posture just two weeks ago when the idea of a health care summit was first pitched by President Obama. At that time, Obama promised to engage in substantive negotiations with the GOP on all parts of health care reform plan during the summit:

“I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward” Mr. Obama said in the interview from the White House Library.

The 2/8/2010 NYT piece quoted above notes that it “remained an open question whether the meeting could lead to real consensus on health care, or whether it would serve only to allow Democrats to frame a political argument against the Republicans going into the midterm campaign.” Considering this morning’s developments, and the clearly stated intent to move forward with reconciliation passage of the intra-Democrat negotiated Obamacare, there no longer remains a “open question” and instead Obama intends the coming summit to “serve only to allow Democrats to frame a political argument against the Republicans going into the midterm campaign.”

For the ideological left, this morning’s White House summary and the coming health care summit represent “the last, best shot” to pass a comprehensive, government-centered health care reform plan. To a majority of Americans, including almost all conservatives, a strong majority of independents and even some liberals, the Obama Administration’s continued relentless focus on forcing a strongly partisan Obamacare package through Congress is an unfavorable development, as shown by public polling of Obama’s job approval and the approval of the Democratic health care reform packages in Congress.

At least eight Democratic Senators have already announced their opposition to the use of reconciliation to pass Obamacare, and those Democratic Senators will almost certainly be joined by the 41 GOP Senators in opposition to the President’s reconciliation plan as announced this morning. It appears from early GOP responses that the GOP intends to attempt to garner 10 Democratic Senator votes to block the use of reconciliation (with 10 Democratic votes, the GOP would have the 51 votes needed to block reconciliation).

Indeed, the irony of the health care reform debate and Obama’s continuous public pledges to engage in bipartisan negotiations with the GOP is the fact that the only bipartisanship associated with health care reform is the bipartisan opposition in the House and Senate to Obamacare, and the next few weeks will probably determine if the GOP is able to garner enough bipartisan support to block the passage of Obamacare through the 51-vote (50 votes plus VP Biden tiebreaker) reconciliation process.  Finally, should Obama succeed in finding 217 House votes and 50 Senate votes for Obamacare, the response of the electorate towards those Democrats in November 2010 may be an historic wave of GOP victories rivaling or even surpassing the 1994 GOP wave.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Strong Public Support for the Obama Presidency Falls to New Low

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

Strong support for of Obama's Presidency dwindled to a new low today: 22% of likely voters.

Despite the return of 2007-2008 Obama campaign manager David Plouffe to an active role in molding President Obama’s political strategy, today’s Rasmussen Reports daily polling shows that only 22% of likely voters strongly approve of Obama’s job performance, a new low of Obama’s Presidency, while 41% strongly disapprove:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 22% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. That is the lowest level of strong approval yet recorded for this President.

Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -19. The Approval Index has been lower only on one day during Barack Obama’s thirteen months in office. The previous low came on December 22 as the Senate was preparing to approve its version of the proposed health care legislation. The current lows come as the President is once again focusing attention on the health care legislation.

Including soft supporters and opponents of the President’s job performance, President Barack Obama’s overall job approval now stands at 45% approval and 54% disapproval amongst likely voters, also near his all-time low of disapproval. Today’s polling, as well as other polling done by Gallup, the NYT and CNN, demostrates the perils of President Obama’s renewed focus on health care legislation with an “impassioned plea” for the passage of Obamacare at the Nevada town hall, in yesterday’s weekly Saturday morning message and the upcoming “Health Care Summit” on February 25, 2010. Obama fell to his lowest ratings of his Presidency at prior moments of intense focus on health care reform, and it appears his renewed focus over the past few days is eliciting a similiar reaction amongst the American public.

On the day of Scott Brown’s election to the US Senate in Massachuetts, President Obama decided to bring Plouffe back into his inner circle and subsequently shifted rhetorical gears to again focus on bipartisanship, with an emphasis on economic policy. That shift in Obama’s political strategy, and Obama’s performances in the State of the Union and at the House Republican retreat, appeared to staunch the bleeding of Obama’s core supporters while providing him a slight bounce amongst independents.

As noted above, the Obama Administration’s return to an intense focus on health care reform in the leadup to the “Health Care Summit” on February 25, 2010 appears to have halted any positive momentum from the Plouffe strategic shift and once again led Obama to fresh lows in strong supporters of his Presidency. The Obama Administration, the Democrat Party and special interest groups that support Obamacare all argue that once passed by Congress and signed by Obama, the public’s strongly negative view of Obamacare will reverse itself. As Obama’s job approval ratings have reached their lows at moments of public focus on health care reform, that theory may not be tested after all as Congress may balk at taking the last leap by passing Obamacare in final form for Obama’s signature via reconciliation in the face of strong public disapproval and GOP condemnation.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,