Sen. Harkin Contradicts Obama, Says Final Healthcare Deal Done BEFORE the MA Election

The Hill is reporting that Senator Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health Committee, stated that negotiators from the White House, Senate and House reached a final deal on healthcare reform days before Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts.

From the article:

Labor leaders had announced an agreement with White House and congressional representatives over an excise tax on high-cost insurance plans on the Thursday before the special election.

Harkin said “we had an agreement, with the House, the White House and the Senate. We sent it to [the Congressional Budget Office] to get scored and then Tuesday happened and we didn’t get it back.” He said negotiators had an agreement in hand on Friday, Jan. 15.

Harkin made clear that negotiators had reached a final deal on the entire bill, not just the excise plans, which had been reported the previous day, Jan. 14.

Harkin said the deal covered the prescription-drug “donut hole,” the level of federal insurance subsidies, national insurance exchanges and federal Medicaid assistance to states.

This cannot be right.

If Harkin is telling the truth, then that would mean President Obama is lying because at the GOP retreat, Obama stated that there were some “stray cats and dogs” in the legislation. This quote from Obama at the retreat:

“The last thing I will say, though — let me say this about health care and the health care debate, because I think it also bears on a whole lot of other issues. If you look at the package that we’ve presented — and there’s some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating. For example, we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your — if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you’re not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.”

So which is it? Was the health bill done as Harkin states? Or, were Obama and congressional leaders still trying to capture those stray cats and dogs? If the healthcare bill was sent to the CBO as Harkin confirms, then where’s the score? Was it withdrawn from the CBO due to the MA election?

These are just some of the questions that we will follow up.

Someone is clearly lying, stretching the truth, pandering to the GOP, whatever you want to call it. However, it appears that the White House was trying to jam through the healthcare bill before the MA election, but the CBO could not score it fast enough.

Let’s just hope the Republicans in Congress see the same tom-foolery that the American people see.