Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) “said late Monday that it remains unclear to her whether President Barack Obama’s bipartisan health care summit will engender compromise, and joined her Republican colleagues in panning the administration’s newly released $950 billion reform package,” Roll Call reports.
But Snowe, who long since joined a Republican filibuster of the Democratic health care agenda, said she remains equally unimpressed with this latest version of health care reform as introduced by Obama on Monday. Additionally, Snowe suggested the Democrats’ threat of pursuing reconciliation to pass health care is casting a pall over the president’s bipartisan summit on the issue, which is set for Thursday.
“I don’t see reconciliation as acceptable,” Snowe told reporters Monday, after the jobs bill vote. “I think that that’s a huge mistake, frankly — tactically, strategically and in terms of what is in the best interest of the American people. And I think that that would be a very important step, and gesture, if the president and the leadership removed it, rather than having that as sort of wielding this power, you know, by using an arbitrary tool for purposes that have not been heretofore used.”
Snowe said she “needs to further review Obama’s health care proposal, which is based off of the Senate’s $871 billion package she opposed late last year.”
She “does not expect to attend the health care summit.”
(credit image – associated press)
Congress in Your Pocket
S E N A T U S 
Senator Snowe,
The “threat of pursuing reconciliation to pass” will go away with the “threat of pursuing filibuster to stop” and health care is allowed an UP or DOWN vote with a 51 vote majority. That is the way I read the Presidents comments, and I strongly support his stand.
Darcy_M, if you were in the senate and a bill you adamantly opposed was coming to a vote would you lie down and let it go with 51? Or would you fight it with all the tools at hand? Why would you expect others not to?
roger_rider,
As you ended your remarks, “Why would you expect others not to?” can be said of President Obama also. Why should he bend to the will of the minority in the Senate while he has tools at hand to enforce the will of the majority (both house and senate).
Senator Snowe’s personal will should not govern my health-care, I would help make the bill acceptable and accept the will of the majority. That is what I would expect others to do.