health carnage

Democrats Have Finally Decided to Defend That Health-Care Thing They Passed

Rather than sit back and allow Republicans to grandstand and make a big show of voting for a time-wasting, dead-end repeal of the Obama health-care act, Democrats have finally grown a pair and decided to fight back. (Now that the next election is two years away, at any rate.) They’re putting together a coordinated public defense against the Republicans’ plan to bad-mouth Ᾱ and then chip away at — their massive legislative victory. From the Times:

Senior Democratic officials said their effort will be managed by a rapid response operation modeled after the ones Mr. Obama used during his presidential campaign. That team will monitor Republican claims, send out fact-checks and deploy a team of surrogates to get their views on television. Paid television advertisements will be run “as warrants,” said one senior Democrat, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the program. Organizing for America, the president’s chief political apparatus, will host phone banks and will schedule events featuring people who would lose their benefits if the health care law were repealed.”

We will make clear to the American people, that as their first order of business, Republicans have decided not to focus on jobs and deficit reduction, but on re-litigating partisan battles — that, if successful, would eliminate help for our job-creating small business and explode the deficit,” DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan told the Times.

We’ve got their first ad for them: something about how the Congressional Budget Office just announced that, according to their analysis, repealing Obamacare would add $230 billion to the deficit, maybe?

Democrats Plan Attack on Republican Repeal Effort [NYT]

Democrats Have Finally Decided to Defend That Health-Care Thing They Passed