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February 18, 2010 08:29 PM UTC

Romanoff Would Have Killed the Senate Healthcare Bill - He Said It

  • 31 Comments
  • by: BICora

Caroman, MADCO, and others are right.

My until now undecided neighbor is now for Bennet. (and she caucuses with all her friends)  

Caroman said that he thought Romanoff implied it at the HD37 meeting, MADCO said Romanoff implied it elswhere, I think he implied it a suburban clubhouse party. Campaign staff have denied it to me.  But Tuesday night he said it.

Caroman posted after the debate that maybe Romanoff said it. RSB acknowledged that AR talks fast and it was hard to transcribe everything.

But AR was on Channel 4 News this morning whining about Bennet campaining with his biggest endorsement, as he reeled off his own lesser endorsements (which is it- endorsements don’t matter and elected officials should stay out of it, or they do matter and it’s a good thing other elected D’s speak up?).

And News 4 said they have 12 minutes of the debate up on their website.

http://cbs4denver.com/campaign…

There are no time marks, it’s hard to scroll, but just past the halfway point, talking about the Senate healthcare bill,  Romanoff says it would have “only taken one Senator” to stand up to the special deals before the vote (which Bennet did) and then he says “I wouldn’t have voted for …”

Senate healthcare bill dies.

DeMint and the R’s have their “Obama waterloo.”

The Senate gets to start over, which if the lesson of the recent “start overs” on healthcare are useful, would have meant 15 or 20 or 40 years or more. Because then Scott Brown wins, Dorgan and Bayh announce they’re out. Other D seats are at risk, House and Senate. And so on.

Instead, Bennet is one of 60 to vote yes and we have a Senate bill. And now with Bennet’s leadership we have a chance to get healthcare reform through reconciliation.  

I know, I know, because I’ve heard Andrew and his supporters say it too,  that AR supporters say that if only AR was our Senator, then we would have had a bill that seriously considered single payer, would have kept the public option and not gotten all those “special deals” and still got the thing passed.

Yesterday I called it the “faerie dust” argument.  It’s worse than that because at least the faerie dust argument is rapidly seen as insane or at least foolish.

Voyageur called it making the perfect the enemy of the good which is both too kind and much more accurate.

Romanoff and his supporters sound like petulant children.

I should have had the appointment, mine mine mine

If I had been appointed, I would have done it better

If we didn’t get a public option, it’s Bennet’s fault

It’s all his fault

My neighbor has been defending Andrew – primaries are good, challenge is good, Andrew is good – and was undecided until I showed her this this morning.  Now she thinks he’s either idealistically unrealistic (she’s too kind to call it the faerie dust argument) or he’s just not ready for this kind of office.  

She predicted that Andrew would make the comparison to how we do it in Colorado, and how under his House leadership he would never have allowed it.  (I think she’s right but I wasn’t there Tuesday and haven’t heard him say exactly that before.) But she pointed out that the US Senate doesn’t work like the Colorado legislature and that he was in a leadership position because of term limits and would have been a jr nobody in the Senate.

He said it.

Update: March 2 2010

I’ve been waiting for better video to be posted. I’m right and the quote is accurate.  Yes, AR went on to describe it as a “false choice”, but that’s not the point. The point is he said he would not have voted for the Senate Bill as it was.

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31 thoughts on “Romanoff Would Have Killed the Senate Healthcare Bill – He Said It”

  1. AR – Elected officers shouldn’t be campaigning, see all of the ones who endorse me! Lordy.

    Reminds me of the call I received from his Jeffco field organizer a few days ago:

    AR Field Guy: Why do you like MB better?

    JeffcoDemo:  I have heard them both, MB talked about the issues and how he is working on them in the senate.  AR talked about how MB got appointed and that was bad, all he talked about was MB.

    AR Field Guy: Don’t you know he is taking all that special interest money.

    JeffcoDemo: Do you understand irony?

    AR Field Guy: AR is not taking PAC money

    JeffcoDemo: Has he been offered any?  Didn’t AR take PAC money the entire time he was in the state house?

    AR Field Guy: You need to see how much MB is getting from these PACs

    JeffcoDemo: Thank you, good night.

    So here it is:

    Its ok to collect PAC money unless you do it too well

    Its ok to use elected officials unless you find a better one than mine.

    I have to go see my president speak, see you later.

      3. refused PAC money to show he was not beholden to special interest, something that made a clear distinction between him and his opponents.

        http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

         

        Candidate Obama came out against taking PAC contributions during the 2008 cycle.

        In fact, he said that the only way ordinary peoples’ voices can be heard is if candidates stop taking money from special interest PACs.

        Like Barack Obama, Andrew feels that this kind of money distorts the political process, creates a conflict between constituents and contributors, and increases the cynicism of the American people.

        Our opponent, Michael Bennet, has raised a lot of money from PACs and special interests. According to Huffington Post he has raised $612,804 of “Wall Street Campaign Cash,” making him the number 5 recipient in all of Congress. On Dick Durbin’s amendment to help people whose homes faced foreclosure due to bankruptcy, he voted with the banks.

          1. which I posted FIRST to this diary, you can see I was not changing the subject, just responding the to the attacks on Romanoff because he rejected PAC money, which is something the President made part of his campaign platform.

          1. luxury of refusing PAC money as a principled stand

            was just a campaign gimmick that he would not have made if he hadn’t pulled in significant small dollar donations?

            Correct me if I am wrong, but you are implying the President is a phony.

            1. RSB is implying that if Romanof could raise enough to appear viable without PAC/corp donations now, we wouldn’t be having the discussion.  

              I posted this somewhere else to someone else-

              I’m not saying the candidate with the most money always wins.  I’m agreeing with others here who have said that you need enough to be viable.  

              Udall: no primary, long coattails – spent approx $15 million.  

              Salazar: primary, no coat tails – spent approx $12 million.

              Are there enough individual Colorado donors to raise that kind of money? There never has been before.

              But Obama did it

              Oh, well, I didn’t realize Romanoff was going to fundraise nationwide and would be the kind of candidate who can motivate the millions and millions of small donors like Obama.

              If Obama hadn’t raised boatloads of cash from the individual donors and still rejected PAC/corp donors he’d have lost.

    3. stated that he was standing up to backroom deals like the Nebraska deal by Ben Nelson and Landrieu’s ‘Louisiana Purchase’ being negotiated into the Healthcare Bill.

      In fact, when Bennet says, ‘I would not have voted to ‘kill the bill’ this is the response Romanoff provides rebuking that idea.

      “This is really a false choice to suggest the only option we have got is to either ‘kill the bill’ or to settle for the back room deals with a public option – less proposal is false… When insurance companies cut deals with members of the Senate to kill the public option…it points to a a Senate that is fundamentally broke…  If 41 members of the minority party are going to hold up progress with the threat of the filibuster, then it is time for someone from the majority party to call their bluff and see how long their lungs or bladders or the American people, hold out for that spectacle.”

      saying that Romanoff is against the Healthcare and would have killed the bill is a misleading characterization of what he said, and if one watches that video, there is no way you could draw that conclusion.

      2. Are you saying that AR didn’t say what I quoted?

        Or that even if he did say it, he said other stuff to qualifiy it as a “false choice”?

        False choice?

        Sure it’s not the only choice we’ve  got now.  But it was the only choice any Senator had in December.

        Vote yes, imperfections and all.

        Or kill the Senate bill.

        I recall Senator Bennet appearing on CNN a month prior to the final Senate bill. And when asked a hypothetical question in a simple yes or nor format, about whether he would vote for the bill if it had public option and  if he thought that vote would cost him his re-election and he said yes.

        Yes or no question –

        If the bill came up as it did, would Andrew Romanoff have voted for it as Senator Bennet did?

        Tuesday he said “No”

        “I wouldn’t have voted for…”

        Yes, and then a bunch of other stuff.

        1. to Harry Reid et al. we have a Senate healthcare bill that is polling at 34% popularity and that forces you to buy insurance, and oh yeah, makes Coloradoans pay for Nebraska’s Medicaid.

          Tell me you would vote for that?

          The problem was, too much negotiation, not enough lines in the sand.

          And

          Yes, and then a bunch of other stuff.

          like this quote directly from Romanoff?

          This is really a false choice to suggest the only option we have got is to either ‘kill the bill’ or to settle for the back room deals with a public option – less proposal is false…

          the bunch of other stuff proves that he was not saying ‘kill the bill’ but use the leadership of the majority party to stop these back room deals. (like Nelson’s medicaid buy out)

          You statements are lies, and if you were a quality blogger, you would write a retraction or correction. I have done it before, and it is not so hard.  

          1. You sure about that? You might want to check your facts, Wade. There was such a backlash against Nelson over that, he asked for it to be removed. And you know who the first senator was to rail against it? Bennet. And you know when he did it? Not, as Romanoff has been saying for a month, after the bill was passed.

            You[r] statements are lies, and if you were a quality blogger, you would write a retraction or correction. I have done it before, and it is not so hard.  

            … I’m waiting.

              1. And will your “many more links” include that video of the islanders, which used to show up in all your posts? Is it ok if I don’t embed 10 videos and slew a dozen block quotes down the page?

                Bennet took to the Senate floor on Dec. 21 to denounce the back room deals. For over a month, Romanoff was telling voters Bennet did this after the bill had already passed, and Romanoff would have done differently. But the bill passed the Senate on Dec. 24, a point Bennet made at the debate Tuesday after Romanoff made his charge again, and Romanoff didn’t respond.Nelson, shamed by the reaction to his bribe, asked that it be withdrawn about three weeks later.

                Bennet criticizes backroom deals (video): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

                Senate passes health care reform bill three days later (not before Bennet criticized the deals, as Romanoff has said): http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITI…

                Nelson caves on Medicaid bribe, asks it be withdrawn: http://www.weaselzippers.net/b…

                What Romanoff was saying to voters: http://www.coloradostatesman.c…

                As for the back room exchange at the debate, I don’t have a link for that, because it’s something I saw live and in person. Anyone who was there will tell you that’s what happened, though I don’t think it made it into any of the news reports.

                1. “As for the back room exchange at the debate,…”

                  What exchange?

                  Can you elaborate?  I didn’t see this referenced anywhere else on Pols- perhaps this was offline.

                  1. Paraphrasing, Romanoff said one senator could have stood up to the deals, not just denounced them after the bill was passed. Bennet said he denounced them before the bill was passed, thank you, and Nelson was eventually so shamed by the publicity he had his deal removed.  

              2. Wade, you said you’d respond when I gave you the links, but you haven’t.

                As you said earlier:

                You[r] statements are lies, and if you were a quality blogger, you would write a retraction or correction. I have done it before, and it is not so hard.

                So, are you a “quality blogger” or not? It’s not so hard to admit you were wrong, is it?

          2. when Senator bennet had to vote yes- imperfections and flaws and all, or no and kill the Senate healthcare bill.

            I get that the claim now is  if only Andrew Romanoff had been there instead , then we would have a whole different bill, and he wouldn’t have been faced with the actual choice that Senator Bennet was faced with.

            Where precisely is the mistake?

            I quoted what he said.

            I reacted to the quote using the facts at hand.

            I ignored the part where AR characterized the vote as a “false choice” not because I was making stuff up and speculating on what might have been, but because he was.  And while his imagination and speculations are informative, that’s not the way it happened.

          3. I fail to see the error of BIC’s post.

            Are you challenging the quote?

            Are you saying the quote is out of context?

            Or are you just complaining because bic hasn’t bought into the “if I was there it wouldda been different” framing of the argument ?

            I may be missing your point. I’ve been wrong before- and admitted it.

            I may  have heard it wrong in the room Tuesday and in that poor clip on Ch4.

            But I agree with BIC that he said  he would not have voted for the Senate healthcare bill.

            You call it a false choice- but Bennet and 59  other Senators were in the building trying to get the best bill possible and the choice for all 60 was vote Aye for the one they had, or kill it.  Nothing false about that.

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