Daily Local News: Lawmakers Weigh in on Brown's Win

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Lawmakers weigh in on Brown's win

By DAN KRISTIE, Staff Writer

The reactions of local congressmen to the election of Republican Scott Brown to the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat once held by Ted Kennedy fell along predictable ideological lines.

Brown, a Massachusetts state senator, said that if sent to Washington, he would oppose the Democrats' health care reform bill. His presence in the Senate will most certainly give the Republicans enough seats to filibuster the health care bill in the Senate.

U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, a Democrat who represents parts of eastern Chester County, lamented Brown's election, saying that it put health care reform in serious jeopardy. But, he said, Brown's election is a repudiation of the current drafts of the bill.

U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach, a Republican who represents central and northern portions of Chester County, said that Brown's election was a "wake-up call" that indicated Republican ideas need to be included in the health care reform bill.

And U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts, a Republican who represents the southern portion of the county, said that, with the economy in the tank, Congress is wrong to even be considering health care reform.

"The American people want us to focus on job creation, but instead the administration and Congress has been spending all its energy trying to push through an expensive and extremely unpopular health care bill and massive spending bills that are bankrupting our country," Pitts said. "The only new jobs created by the health care bill would be for government bureaucrats."

Sestak said that Brown's election could stop dead in its tracks Ted Kennedy's dream of seeing health care reform pass.

"One year after President Obama's historic election, we have lost the seat of Sen. Ted Kennedy and have seriously jeopardized his life's work of seeing that all Americans have access to health care," Sestak said.

He added, however, that Brown's election should indicate to Democrats that they should stop permitting the bill to be weakened through "back-room political dealing in the Senate."

He took Brown's election as an opportunity to criticize U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, against whom he is running in the Pennsylvania Democratic Senatorial primary. Specter, he claimed, was responsible for some of this dealing.

Gerlach called Brown's victory an indication that Bay State voters are displeased with the direction health care reform has taken.

"The people of Massachusetts have delivered a wake-up call to Washington," Gerlach said. "Scott Brown's victory is a decisive repudiation of the closed-door negotiations, sweetheart deals and complete disregard for taxpayers that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have shown in their attempt to pass a severely flawed health care bill."

The bill, he said, would have included too many tax hikes for families and business owners, would have cut services for seniors, and would have forced states to overspend on health care.

Gerlach called for a bill that would lead to "more portable, affordable and accessible" health care coverage.

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