As Democrats ramp up their day-long press tour to criticize the House Republican plan to vote on a repeal of the landmark health care reform bill today, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is using this month’s tragedy in Tucson to take on the GOP.
Speaking at a press conference this morning, Wasserman Schultz — who was joined by several other Democratic members of Congress as well as several Obama administration officials including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius — said that one of the heroes of the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson that left six dead and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) in the hospital is opposed to the House legislative action today.
“Normally I would step to a microphone like this and tell a story about the impact that decision might have on a constituent in my district,” Wasserman Schultz said. “Instead what I’m going to do is share with you what Pat Maisch — who was the hero who dropped the second magazine out of the gunman’s hand during the tragedy in Tucson — what she planned to say to Gabby Giffords when she was waiting on line to talk to her.”
Wasserman Schultz said Maisch wanted the health care reforms signed into law by President Obama in March kept in place, and that the Arizona grandmother bemoaned the tone of the repeal debate led by the new Republican House majority.
“[Maisch] wanted me to share that she wanted us to choose our words more carefully,” Wasserman Schultz said. “She had planned to tell Gabby, amazingly even before this tragedy, how inappropriate she thought [it was that] ‘job-killing’ was part of the title of this legislation.”
[TPM SLIDESHOW: Tucson Heroes: Arizonans Shine In Face Of Tragedy]
House Speaker John Boehner recently dropped the phrase “job-killing” when referring to the health care law. He now calls it “job-crushing” or “job-destroying.” The official title on the repeal bill expected to pass in the House still includes the word “killing,” however.
Wasserman Schultz and the other speakers at this morning’s press conference rejected that notion, claiming the law was good for the economy and produced jobs.
Sebelius was joined by Small Business Administration Administrator Karen Mills and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. All three said the the reforms passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress last March will strengthen the economy and improve the prospect for the millions of unemployed Americans.
“People talk about repeal as ‘political theater’ or ‘symbolism,’” Sebelius said. “It isn’t symbolic to the 149 million Americans with health conditions who are now locked out or priced out of the market. And it sure isn’t symbolic to those working families who desperately need health security for themselves and their families and are looking forward to the day when they will indeed have that kind of security.”
Update: Wasserman Schultz expanded on her comments in an interview this afternoon. I asked her if she thought there was a connection between the repeal effort and the shootings, or if the Republican repeal push was unseemly in the wake of the Tucson tragedy. Wasserman Schultz said she was just bringing Maisch’s message to Washington, not making a connection of any kind between Tucson and today’s debate.
“[Maisch] never had a chance to share with Gabby that she was going to tell her to fight hard to prevent the Republicans from repealing health care reform and so she wanted me to give voice to what she would have told her congresswoman but couldn’t,” she told me.
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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