Thank goodness Sen. Claire McCaskill can count on the media to help her out.
The press started spreading the rumor this week that McCaskill is questioning Obamacare even though she not only supported the plan, but also traveled the state promoting it at townhall meetings.
Jake Wagman at The St. Louis Post Dispatch reported:
With 2012 Republican opposition already circling, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill continues to question a key component of the president’s health care plan.
Politico has McCaskill, who’s already attracted two GOP contenders hoping to unseat her, joining a band of moderate Senate Democrats exploring ways to replace the mandate portion of the health care legislation approved by Congress last year.
McCaskill told Politico writer Manu Raju that they are looking for something “less than a mandate,” such as limited enrollment periods with financial penalties for not signing up. (That’s not a mandate?)
“It may be that the mandate is the only way we can do it,” McCaskill said. “But I think we should explore it.”
Under the plan signed into law last year, individuals could eventually face a fine of up to 2.5 percent of their income for not having insurance.
Of course, they forgot to mention this.
When McCaskill had the opportunity to remove the mandate during Senate negotiations in 2010, she refused. Instead, she voted to keep the mandate in the bill by killing a Republican amendment (H.R. 4872, CQ Vote #101: Motion agreed to 58-40: R 0-40; D 56-0; I 2-0, 3/25/10, McCaskill Voted Yea).
Lloyd Smith, Executive Director of the Missouri Republican Party, said this:
“Claire McCaskill voted to keep the unconstitutional individual mandate in the health care bill, she cast the deciding vote in favor of Obamacare, and then she traveled the state in support of the law. McCaskill had plenty of opportunities to seek alternatives to the individual mandate, but instead, she sided with Barack Obama every chance she got and forced costly, burdensome, and unconstitutional regulations on every single Missourian. McCaskill’s sudden election-cycle repentance is too little, too late.”
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