Pelosi’s Lap Dog Dan Maffei Says he Will Only Vote for Health Bill with Public Option

Oh, and he’s “undecided” on how to pay for it. This, on the day news of our national debt and deficit exploding. And it sure must have been a lot easier to sit down and speak candidly with the editorial board that endorsed him than it was with his constituents.

If there is no public option, I don’t see that bill passing the House,” Maffei said Tuesday at a meeting of The Post-Standard’s editorial board. “I would not support a bill that doesn’t have a strong public option, just as I wouldn’t support bills that don’t have private options.”

It was the first time that Maffei, D-DeWitt, has said that a lack of a public option would be a deal-breaker when it comes to his vote. [...]

Maffei said he reached his conclusion after holding a series of town hall meetings, some marked by heated debate, and talking with residents across the 25th District as Congress takes its August recess.

“It’s a very emotional topic,” Maffei told the editorial board.

“What you have is a large group of people who simply do not trust the government … to provide them with health insurance,” he said. “You also have another large group of people — perhaps larger — that does not trust the private sector. They’ve had bad experiences with private insurance. They want a government option like Medicare, like they see with seniors.”

Gee, thanks, Dan. The “large group — perhaps larger” that does not trust the private sector is made up of people sent to your town hall by far left groups. They had pre-printed signs and flyers sporting the White House email address!

To find out how Maffei believes we’ll pay for this public option one would have had to turn to page A-12 of the printed newspaper. The back page headline reads “He’s undecided on how to pay for reform.” Ha! Ya think? We’re broke! We’re worse than broke! But democrats don’t need to worry about pesky little issues like “how to pay” for things.

And he also had the nerve to say this:

On criticism of the $787 billion federal economic stimulus program: Maffei defended the decision to send $8 billion to the National Institutes of Health, and said if it had been up to him, he would have spent more.

The National Republican Congressional Committee in Washington, D.C., this week criticized a $219,000 stimulus grant from the NIH to Syracuse University to study the sexual “hookups” of 500 freshmen women.

“The NIH has been chronically, horrendously, almost criminally underfunded during the Bush administration,” he said.

I guess Maffei finds “funding sexual hookups” a good use of taxpayer money. He acts like the government has money, like it’s their money to spend, and not spending enough of it is criminal.

Sorry, I beg to differ. What’s criminal is the way this Congress and the Obama administration are spending money with such abandon and recklessness. That’s what’s criminal.

But hey, Maffei’s keeping his liberal donors from outside our district happy. Isn’t that all that matters in politics anymore?

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