The Partisan Health Bill in the Senate and Obama's Delusional\Disingenuous Response to It.

Health Care Legislation is moving forward, I am skeptical it will be ready before the fall,but some of the outlines will be ready by the end of Summer. Yesterday the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions led by Chris Dodd and Kennedy announced their version of health care. It is similar to the house bill and quite liberal in nature. This is not a surprise, there have been several centers of power regarding legislation with the Senate primarily divided between Dodd and his committee and Max Baucus and the Finance Committee. Baucus has pushed a genuine bi-partisan bill, it did not support a public plan and preferred to use health care co-operatives as a means to expand coverage. The biggest divide is till how to pay for it, Baucus leaned towards taxing employee benefits where as Rangel and the House want tax increase on the "rich". As for Obama he has decided to take his disingenuous rhetoric to new levels by changing the meaning of bi partisan ship. In the real world its when both parties vote on a bill they mutually support, but according to the white house its now:

White House officials said they had a new standard for bipartisanship: the number of Republican ideas incorporated in the legislation, rather than the number of Republican votes for a Democratic bill. Mr. Obama said the health committee bill “includes 160 Republican amendments,” and he said that was “a hopeful sign of bipartisan support for the final product.”

Republicans said many of those amendments were technical, and they were scathing in their criticism of the bill approved by the health committee.

With a hint of sarcasm, Senator Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, the senior Republican on the panel, noted that the bill’s title was the Affordable Health Choices Act. But “with its trillion-dollar price tag,” he said, “this bill is anything but affordable.”

“The bill gets an F,” Mr. Enzi said.

Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, a Republican who has teamed up with Democrats to pass major health care bills over the last 25 years, said the measure approved Wednesday was “totally partisan.”

“From the start of the health care debate,”Mr. Hatch said, “Democrats have completely shut us out of the process.”

Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, said the bill would not provide universal coverage or reduce health costs, but would result in some Americans’ losing insurance or even their jobs. “Small business will be massively impacted,” Mr. Gregg said.

Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, said the Republicans were sore losers. “We gave them hours of debate and opportunities to offer unlimited amendments,” she said. “At the end of the day, they did not want to support universal health coverage.”

The president has been misleading throughout the debate but this whopper is a doozy. The bill which passed Dodd's committee by a party line vote of 13-10 and is facing adamant GOP opposition is as partisan as could be, but Obama spouted this delusional comment to give him and the democrats extra political cover.

This is from Karl Rove's piece in the journal this morning, although he was attacking Obama's nonsense on the stimulus, I think its rather fitting to the theme of this post:

In his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell wrote about words used in a "consciously dishonest way." "That is," Orwell wrote, "the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different." Americans are right to wonder if their president is using his own private definitions for the words he uses to sell his policies.