July 27, 2009 11:28 PM UTC

Polis Health Care Fiasco Deepens

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• by: Colorado Pols

For a little while this weekend, you might have been able to convince yourself that freshman Rep. Jared Polis was stepping back from the brink of disaster over his recent attacks on the landmark health care reform bill being considered in the House of Representatives. In a Boulder Daily Camera guest column Saturday, Polis wrote:

In Congress, we are debating legislation that would implement President Obama’s health care plan to directly address the staggering 47 million Americans without health insurance. I strongly support the principles of President Obama’s plan, which will help families by reducing individual health care costs and encouraging preventative care programs to keep kids healthy before sickness starts. By allowing individuals to keep what they like or to shop around for new coverage, the public option in the plan gives Americans increased choice and the much-needed stability and peace of mind that is currently lacking in our health care system.

The United States spends 16.5 percent of our GDP on health care costs, while the average among European nations is only 8.6 percent. We pay more, receive less, and we don’t even cover every American. We simply must reduce costs in addition to expanding coverage.

The original House bill fell short of the vision articulated by President Obama in that it lacked some of the cost-saving policies he has called for…

Polis goes on to explain his now-infamous ‘mini-revolt’ letter and committee vote against the bill as made “knowing that the bill still had the votes to make it out of my committee.” Fair enough–this explanation will newly upset those who don’t like such games on principle, and (more importantly) won’t satisfy the many critics who feel his comments and vote has already endangered passage of health care reform, and contributed significantly to the decision by leadership to put the measure off until after the August recess. But at least he was offering a direct explanation for his actions to his increasingly nervous CD-2 base: he didn’t think he was hurting anything. Okay.

And then we read the Washington Post today, and watched Polis demolish whatever goodwill he may have recovered. Once again, wholly self-inflicted:

House leaders face two rebellious factions: the Blue Dogs, who want more cost savings in the health-care bill, and newly elected Democrats from moderate districts, who are protesting the surtax on wealthy households that would fund about half of the House bill.

Rep. Jared Polis, a first-term Democrat who represents the affluent Boulder, Colo., area, signed a letter with 20 fellow freshmen and one sophomore member objecting to the tax, which would apply to families with incomes of $350,000 and higher. Polis and his allies worry about the tax hitting small businesses, like the thriving Boulder Book Store and the Mountain Sun brewery in his home town.

Polis said he is encouraged that Pelosi is considering revising the surtax provision so that it hits only millionaire households, a threshold Obama endorsed at his news conference Wednesday. But Polis said he still worries about the small-business impact — a question he knows Republican critics will raise, as well.

In several meetings with the speaker, the freshmen expressed their concern to Pelosi that the bill reinforces the image of Democrats as “the tax-and-spend party of the your grandfather,” as Polis put it. [Pols emphasis]

There is no way to sugar-coat this. If you are a partisan Republican, like (for example) friend-of-Jared Alex Cranberg is a Republican, you’re loving this. He’s doing your work for you exquisitely, except maybe the part where he pretends to support the bill in guest opinion columns.

Nobody else is loving this. There isn’t a single Democrat we’ve spoken to who has found Jared’s statements to be constructive, or helpful in any way to the goal of passing health care reform legislation. The health care reform advocacy groups are apoplectic over the harm he’s done, and that was before he went on record that the bill is a product of ‘your grandpa’s tax-and-spend Democratic Party.’ It would seem to confirm the worst attacks leveled by Polis’ primary opponents during the 2008 campaign–the charge that despite all his liberal platitudes, and lavish support for Democratic candidates and causes, Rep. Polis is manifesting as a Trojan Horse for his rich Republican buddies.