Connecticut Delegates Express Support for Health Care Reform
Conn. Reaction
Norwalk Hour
Katerina Voutsina
Boston University Washington News Service
09/10/2009
WASHINGTON –The Connecticut congressional delegation on Thursday praised President Barack Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress and echoed his call for bipartisan cooperation on a health care overhaul.
“President Obama made a tremendous case for action on health care reform,” Democratic Sen. Christopher J. Dodd said in a statement Thursday.
Dodd, who shepherded one version of a health care bill through the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee during the long illness of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, also underlined Obama’s expression of urgency and his call for a bipartisan consensus on the issue.
“We have come too far to turn back now,” Dodd said. “And I believe that this Congress will leave behind the cheap politics of a hot summer and get back to doing the job we were sent here to do,” he said.
Independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman said in a separate statement Thursday that he was pleased with Obama’s speech.
“The President gave a clear indication that he wanted to work together in a bipartisan way to pass legislation that will reform our health care insurance system while restraining costs,” he said. “I look forward to working with the President and my colleagues to adopt significant reforms this year.”
Freshman Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th, in a telephone interview Thursday, said Obama’s speech was “very helpful.” The president “traced successfully the outlines of his plan,” Himes said.
Himes, who held seven town-hall meetings on health care since April, spoke of what he described as the urgency of change in the insurance industry. “I heard all kinds of opinions” at those meetings, he said, saying that the growing anxiety and fears about a health care overhaul was an outcome of “the misinformation that the president addressed forcefully last night.”
He said the “you lie” outburst by Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina was evidence that “the debate turns ugly and people say things which are damaging the basic respect and commonality that we share as Americans. Joe Wilson went way over that line yesterday.”
Dodd, in his statement, said the President understands that health care reform isn’t about him, or about anyone in Congress who already has good health care insurance.
“It’s about making health care more affordable for families, businesses and the federal government,” Dodd said. “It’s about creating an America where people don’t go broke because they get sick, where people don’t die because they can’t get the treatment they need.”
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