Liz Cheney on Health Care | |
CHENEY: Yes. We do need to recognize that health care costs are out of control. There is a need for tort reform, to purchase insurance across state lines, and to find ways to insure people with pre-existing conditions. I don't think we can salvage any of ObamaCare, and this disaster must be repealed. I would hope that even this president is having a wake-up call, realizing that the federal government cannot effectively run massive and complicated parts of our economy. Just look at this tax on medical devices. I have a 13-year-old daughter with diabetes that is reliant on a medical device. My father is alive today because of medical devices. Yet the Democrats want a tax that would create a disincentive for people to invent. This is fundamentally wrong.
CHENEY: I do. I think there is no way he could not have known the truth. There was very clearly a situation in which they were thinking, "You know what? The media never holds us accountable. They're not going to hold us accountable here." He believes and, ultimately, he wants to move to a single-payer program. I think he probably figured that he had to say this in order to get it passed. So, there is no question that he lied, and that we're all paying the price for it now. And you see real turmoil, frankly, inside the Democratic Party, because now, even Democrats are having to admit what the president said was fundamentally untrue and that this has been a train wreck.
CHENEY: Legislating is about knowing where to draw the line. Certainly, at some point, we all believe in compromise for the good of the nation. So, when the president or his allies say, "Hey, we're going to take over a sixth of the economy," Sen. Enzi's response was essentially to say, "OK, let's negotiate about that." The right response would have been: absolutely not. And, frankly, if all of the Republicans had done that at the beginning, had stood their ground and refused to compromise on this, we probably wouldn't be where we are today. Instead, you have Republicans like Sen. Enzi who gave the president the ability to say, "Hey, this is a bipartisan effort"--when, in fact, it wasn't. It was never intended to be. And they got used.