Kline gets a White House invite

Posted at 5:55 PM on February 12, 2010 by Tom Scheck (1 Comments)
Filed under: Campaign 2010, Campaign 2010: U.S. House, U.S. House

The Washington Post is reporting that GOP Rep. John Kline was one of 10 Republican members of Congress to be invited to attend President Obama's health care summit:

The White House on Friday issued its formal invitation to Republicans to attend a health care summit on Feb. 25, calling it "the next step" in the process of reforming the country's broken health insurance system.

In a letter to lawmakers, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the half-day meeting at Blair House will include the top congressional leaders in both parties and the ranking members in committees that deal with health care.

I'm checking with Kline's office to see if he'll attend.

Here's a response from Troy Young, Kline's communications director:

Mr. Kline expects to attend if it's going to be productive. He hopes the White House is more interested in facilitating a worthwhile dialogue about solutions than in partisan theater.

But there are still unanswered questions about who will be included in this summit and whether Democrats are serious about sitting down with a blank piece of paper to develop commonsense, bipartisan health care reforms. Mr. Kline would certainly participate in a serious attempt to press the reset button and scrap the government takeover of health care. It remains to be seen whether that's what is being proposed.

Comments (1)

Mr. Kline can make Minnesota proud if he attends the White House conference on health care, and if he goes with the intent of working with others to create legislation that can help us reduce the costs of health care. He should hold the White House and the Democrats on the panel to their pledge to compromise. He should not sabotage the process by presenting only the same tired Republican ideas of torte reform and shopping for insurance across state lines, decent ideas, but neither will save us significant money or provide more people with health care. While the party activists on both sides might be extremists, Minnesotans are moderates. We support moderates from both parties; and we expect our representatives to work together to provide good government. They have failed at this more than they have succeeded in recent years. Let's see Mr. Kline do better.

Posted by Robert Van Siclen | February 13, 2010 6:52 AM

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