Americans To Congress: Tear Up This Health Care Plan!

Washington, Feb 12 - “Is it better to build on the health care plan that has been working its way through the House and Senate, or should Congress scrap that plan and start all over again?”

28% Build on the health care plan that has been working its way through the House & Senate

61% Congress should scrap that plan and start all over again

11% Not sure

(Rasmussen Reports; conducted February 9-10, 2010; Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters Nationwide)

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In an op-ed Friday, Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., a physician and head of the Republican Study Committee, derided the summit as "simply an attempt by the president to use the White House as a political tool to intimidate his way into a government takeover of health care. The American people and Republicans in Congress will not be taken by this Chicago-style politics."

"It appears our 'pragmatic' president still hasn't gotten the message and remains immovably wedded to the plans already passed in the House and Senate," Price wrote.

In a letter to the top congressional Democrats, the House's leading Republicans criticized the ongoing Democratic negotiations.

"The existence of any kind of backroom health care deal among the White House and Democratic Leaders would certainly make a mockery of the president's stated desire to have a 'bipartisan' and 'transparent' dialogue on this issue," wrote Reps. John Boehner of Ohio, Eric Cantor of Virginia and Mike Pence of Indiana.

The No. 2 Democrat in the House said Friday that a dispute over how to pay for President Barack Obama's sweeping healthcare overhaul is holding up a deal between House and Senate Democrats, one of several stumbling blocks to reviving the legislation.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Friday that he was hopeful although he didn't sound overly optimistic in an interview with Maryland reporters in Annapolis.

"I think we certainly have a framework of a basis for an agreement between the two houses but we haven't gotten there yet," Hoyer said.

"It's going to be tough and we'll have to see," he said.

"Some pay-fors in the Senate bill are very controversial as you know, and some of our pay-fors are very controversial," Hoyer said.

Nonetheless, he said, "We believe that there are a majority of votes in the United States Senate to pass an agreed-upon version between the Senate and the House and we're working on that."

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