In the Oct. 16 story “Herrera Beutler to GOP: ‘Time to face reality,'” Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, said, “the White House and Senate have blocked House efforts to address the issues with the Affordable Care Act.” She and her kind, in the House, chose to hold hostage the budget until their demands to defund health care reform were met. Well, these reforms were passed by majority vote in the House and the Senate, signed into law by the president, and survived a challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court. It is the law.
Just two days later Herrera Beutler said, “The people we represent elected us to solve problems, not to wage a never-ending partisan fight.” You can’t have it both ways, congresswoman. It is she who perpetuated this partisan fight, bringing problem-solving to a standstill on Capitol Hill. If she wants to eliminate affordable health care for all Americans, then change the law. But you don’t hold up budget legislation and you don’t shut down the government to satisfy a pet peeve. Does she advocate both parties shutting down the government every single year for some idiotic reason, or is this tactic only appropriate for Republicans?
Seventy-one percent of the public know who’s responsible for the shutdown, so she’s not fooling too many.
Brad Lasher
Vancouver
