Reid’s Backroom Deal Backfires

(National Republican Senatorial Committee) – One day after U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) attempted to cut a backroom “deal” with doctors in an effort to protect his trial lawyer allies, it was Reid’s fellow Democrat Senators who dealt their Leader a setback and voted against his “doc fix” bill, ensuring its defeat in the United States Senate.

The $250 billion bill, which did not include any budget offsets to cover its enormous price tag, was rejected by a bipartisan majority of Senators who expressed concerns that the fiscally irresponsible legislation only added to the ballooning federal deficit without any plan to pay for it. As reported by The Hill yesterday, Reid told the doctor lobby that he would move forward with a vote in return for them backing away from their push to include medical malpractice reform in the larger health care reform bill.

Ironically, today’s vote comes the same day as a new poll was released showing that a majority of Nevadans – 58 percent of Republicans, 54 percent of Independents, and 51 percent of Democrats – believe Senator Reid is an ineffective senator, while more than half said they believe he is a weak leader.

“This vote was a bipartisan rejection of the partisan and bullying manner in which Harry Reid has approached this critical health care debate,” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Brian Walsh said today. “This is what happens when you ignore not just the concerns of your fellow Democrat Senators, but the concerns of Americans across the country who believe it’s time to turn off the national credit card.”

“Of course, this type of behavior is nothing new for Reid, as he continues to ignore the concerns of senior citizens in Nevada who stand to suffer deep cuts in Medicare under the health care legislation he is pushing. But it does spell serious trouble for Democrat leaders in Congress and the Obama Administration as they push for a trillion-dollar health care experiment when a bipartisan majority in the Senate stands up and says ‘enough is enough’ with this out-of-control spending,” Walsh concluded.