Congressman Bill Owens (D - NY), who was just sworn in yesterday, gave a floor speech this evening announcing that he would vote "yes" on the House health care bill known as H.R. 3962. Mr. Owens is the new congressman from New York's 23rd District. He beat out Conservative Doug Hoffman for the seat after Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava dropped out of the race and endorsed Mr. Owens.
Mr. Owens is being accused by a local newspaper in his district for breaking several campaign promises. H.R. 3962 does have a public option written into the bill. It seems Mr. Owens has been playing flip-flop a few times with his support of the public option in the bill. The Politico reported back in August that Mr. Owens was against the public option, yet The Gouverneur Times reported today that on October 30th (4 days before his election) he said during a debate he generally supported the public option as it was now written (at that time).:
"A spokesman for Congressman Owens indicated correctly that Mr. Owens had recanted his solid position against public option later in the campaign, clarifying that he did not wish public option to be a 'litmus test' for the Health Reform bill and that on Oct. 30th, several days prior to the election, in a debate had stated that he generally supported the public option as it was now written (at that time.)"
Mr. Owens also said he was opposed to cutting medicare benefits, increased taxes on the middle class, and taxing health care benefits. Yet according to the Heritage Foundation there are scheduled medicare cuts and billions in new taxes.
I get the impression that Owens really doesn't expect to win re-election next year and wants to impose as much socialism as possible in his brief tenure.
No comments:
Post a Comment