Earlier this month, Tommy Thompson, former governor of Wisconsin and the Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary under President George W. Bush, along with former Democratic House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, urged Congress to overcome their differences and get the job done on health care reform. And while Thompson admitted there still remained many “troublesome and unresolved” issues in the Baucuscare bill, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) wasted no time in exploiting this as the latest example in ‘bi-partisan support’ for the president’s health care reform legislation. An advertisement produced by the DNC asserts that Thompson along with fellow prominent Republicans like Senator Bob Dole, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Susan Collins, and former Senator Bill Frist support the same health insurance reform proposal they do.
However, Tommy Thompson, appearing on Your World with Neil Cavuto on Fox News this afternoon, insists that what the DNC advertisement is perpetuating is simply not true. He argues that what he and fellow Republicans featured in the commercial signed onto was the notion that Republicans should work for reform, not, as Rahm Emanuel would care to suggest otherwise, that they should pass the reform plan created by the White House and the Congressional Democratic leadership. The advertisement, which has since been pulled from the airwaves, used Thompson’s image without his permission in order to attack Republicans. This was never his intention, the former Wisconsin governor said; his purpose was to bring the two sides together on the issue of health care reform for all Americans. He insists there is eighty percent of this current health care bill that both parties can support and that is what Democrats and Republicans in Congress should be focusing their efforts toward.
Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Baucuscare, Bill Frist, bipartisan, California, Democratic National Committee, DNC, Fox News, George W. Bush, Health and Human Services, HHS, Neil Cavuto, Rahm Emanuel, Richard A. Gephardt, Senator Bob Dole, Senator Susan Collins, Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin
