GOP vows to keep pressuring Dems on health reform

By Daniel Libit

As lawmakers prepare to return for their return to Washington next week, House Republicans have a message for their town-mauled Democratic colleagues: August is over only on the calendar.

The end of the summer recess may mean an end to the beatings back home, but Republicans are vowing to keep the pressure up on health care reform straight into September.

If Democrats — particularly the moderate Blue Dogs — thought August was a bad dream, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) said the GOP is “going to keep the nightmare going through the fall.”

For congressional Republicans, July was all about hoping the summer recess would come before the Democrats could pass a health care bill. August, says Kingston, was about having “as many town hall meetings as possible in order to educate the public, to keep this momentum up.”

Now it’s September, and the focus will shift back to Washington, where House Democrats are awaiting action from the Senate while trying to reconcile three competing bills of their own.

Republicans will return to the Capitol, too, of course, but Kingston said they will still be back home in their districts “mentally, culturally and spiritually.”

And that, says Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), means that Republicans will be bringing back the heat from home. Arguing that a calm political environment favors the party in power, Issa vowed to create the opposite in September.

“If [the Democrats] give us lemons, we want to make very loud lemonade,” he said.

Former GOP Rep. Tom Davis said it will actually be easier for the minority to stir up trouble once lawmakers return to Washington.

“When Congress is in session, [members] have one-minutes at the beginning of the day. They automatically get their voice at that point,” he said. “August is a no man’s land, and Republicans did a good job in August. But when Congress is in session, this legislative process is ugly. For somebody looking outside who doesn’t understand it, this is where the minority can thrive, because they can sit up there while Democrats forming circular firing squads.”

Issa predicted a raucous fall in Washington “because there is no willingness in the Democratic Party to stop this [health care reform] effort. So you can’t cool the saucer unless people are going to say that it’s dead or quit talking about it.”

And Republicans aren’t about to let the energy fizzle back home. Kingston said that Republicans will continue to press their issues with telephone town halls and will host as many face-to-face constituent gatherings as the schedule will permit.

“Saturday we will go to Blue Dog districts,” he said. “We are not going to let them hide.”

California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Republicans’ chief deputy whip, predicted that Democrats themselves are going to have to keep having town halls, even if they don’t like how they turn out.

“I think that is something that is not going to go away for the next year and a half,” he said. “No matter what issues are driven forward, this is a buildup.”

But former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean believes that the American people are tired of the high-volume town hall attacks — and ready for a return to serious legislative efforts.

“Republicans will keep trying,” says Dean, “but I think we’re done with this. The American people are pretty clear they want a civil debate. As soon as people get back to work in Washington, they are going to work on a bill.”

Georgia Rep. Tom Price, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, agrees — to a point.

“What I am hearing from constituents and folks in interviews and conversations outside of my own district is that the American people want us to work together, but they want [that work] to reflect principles of the nation,” he said. “They firmly believe that the bill that has been put on table by [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi, and Democrats in charge don’t reflect those principles.”

If Republicans are, as some members suggest, committed to an autumn of hell-raising and bomb-throwing, the challenge for Democrats is to find a way to answer the criticism without getting sucked into the rhetorical mire.

“I would hope that we don’t do a whole lot of responding to them,” said House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.).