White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer lays down a blog challenge to Republicans: Post your own plan for health care reform, or suffer the consequences of public humiliation. (Yep, this is what public discourse has come to: Obama has showed his, now Republicans have to show theirs.) It is an ironic coming from a White House that steadfastly refused for about a year to explain exactly what President Obama’s plan for health care reform entailed. But pay no mind. Writes Pfeiffer:
The President believes strongly that Thursday’s bipartisan meeting on health insurance reform will be most productive if both sides come to the table with a unified plan to start discussion – and if the public has the opportunity to inspect those proposals up close before the meeting happens. That’s why yesterday the White House posted online the President’s proposal for bridging the differences between the Senate- and House-passed health insurance reform bills. . . . What you can’t do just yet is read about the Republicans’ consensus plan – because so far they haven’t announced what proposal they’ll be bringing to the table. . . . As we said today, we’ll be happy to post the Republican plan on our website once they indicate to us which one we should post. We hope they won’t pass up this opportunity to make their case to the American people.
Now we get to play “Guess the Republican Response”:
a) We won’t show ours until you promise to start over with a blank piece of paper.
b) See Ryan, Paul.
c) If we show you ours, can we be BFF?
d) This is a stunt, I tell you! A stunt! I haven’t been so outraged since Al Gore denied snow! The will of the American people is being thwarted! And unemployment is at 10 percent!
e) What’s a blog?
UPDATE: The answer is a combination of A and B. While Eric Cantor points to a document Republicans released last year, Greg Sargent gets a statement from a GOP aide:
We fundamentally disagree with a comprehensive proposal to reform health care. We think a step by step approach on areas where we agree is the best path forward. We will not be posting a comprehensive alternative to commence a staring contest.