Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 12:33 pm
Sen. Rob Portman had no way of defending himself when confronted with his flip-flop on the use of reconciliation to pass the stimulus.
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STEPHANOPOULOS: I do want to start with the COVID relief bill. You’ve said that the passing this through the reconciliation process would poison the well of bipartisan. But you voted to pass the Trump tax cuts and repeal the Obamacare through the reconciliation process. So, why — so why isn’t right for the Democrats to do this now?
SEN. ROB PORTMAN (R-OH): George, we’re just talking about difficulties of passing this legislation. There’s an easy answer to this, which is let’s make it bipartisan. I mean, COVID relief has never been a partisan issue. Over the last year, we’ve passed five bills, as you know, with overwhelming bipartisan margins.
In fact, there are a bunch of us Republicans, I was one of the ten Republicans who went to see the president a few weeks ago and said, let’s negotiate. You know, we’ve done this five times before, we can do it again.
So, this is not like taxes or healthcare, this is COVID relief, which has always been a bipartisan issue. And, by the way, it doesn’t fit in reconciliation as we’ve seen, because it has to be directly related to the budget, to revenues, or spending, which is why the minimum wage got knocked out. Everybody knows that.
So, I have not figured it out yet but I think what he should do is what you did in the Clinton administration, what the Bush administration did, which is to start off with more bipartisan measures, so that we don’t poison the well, so that we can continue to work together. And in this case, it would be very easy to get Republican support for a COVID relief package.
Portman had no defense for his previous hypocrisy and his claims that COVID relief isn’t related to the budget, but repealing the ACA was are factually wrong.
Sen. Rob Portman is a hypocrite and his answer to the question was to complain that Joe Biden won’t do what Republicans want.
The truth is that Biden could offer the Republicans everything that they want, and they still vote against the bill. Congressional Republicans have been playing this game for years. They want to deny President Biden any success to help themselves win back power.
Rob Portman could not defend his previous votes, so he floated a bipartisan model that Republicans actively sabotage.
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