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Merkley lied to voters, can’t work across the aisle

Merkley, Jeff-020609-18427- 0008 [1]

by NW Spotlight

Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D) has a lot to answer for to Oregon voters – primarily around Obamacare. Beyond the disastrous roll out problems with Obamacare, which passed four years ago, there are the larger issues for Sen. Merkley of lying to voters and refusing to work across the aisle on health care reform.

Lied to voters

Sen. Merkley lied to Oregon voters in 2009 when he told them that “If you like your current health insurance, you will be able to keep it.” It’s a statement that’s still up on his web site [2]. Yet even left-leaning [3] PolitiFact called that the Lie of the Year [4] last year.

Refusing to work across the aisle on health care reform

When Sen. Merkley and fellow Democrats rammed Obamacare through Congress four years ago, they passed it without a single Republican vote [5]. The only bipartisan votes on Obamacare came with the 34 Democratic NO votes in the U.S. House.

The fact that they passed Obamacare without a single Republican vote demonstrates a complete unwillingness by Sen. Merkley and other Democrats to work across the aisle. They ignored the plans put forward by Republicans, including the House GOP plan drafted by Rep. Tom Price [6] (R-GA) and The Patients’ Choice Act of 2009 [7] introduced by [8] U.S. Senators Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) and Richard Burr (R-NC) and U.S. Representatives Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Devin Nunes (R-CA).

Sen. Merkley, more than most, should have known the hard lessons learned up in neighboring Washington State with their failed health care reforms in the early 1990s. One of the big Democratic players in pushing the reforms through (when Democrats controlled both legislative chambers and the Governorship in Washington) said in 2012 [9] that “A fundamental lesson we learned in the process—and that unfortunately was not learned in the federal process—is that health care is so big, so complex, so passionate, that it has got to have bipartisan support.”

Oregon deserves a U.S. Senator who doesn’t lie to them and one who is willing to work across the aisle.

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