Week ahead: Winning the recess

March 29, 2010

Both House campaign committees plan to extend their strategies on the health care issue in different ways this week, as the NRCC plans to dial up its opposition to the new law and the DCCC hopes to pressure Republicans to sign on to repealing another piece of legislation. On the GOP side, the NRCC will relaunch the website for its Code Red campaign against the health care bill — www.gopcodered.com — with the page now intended to serve as a hub for news about fallout from the bill. With plans to highlight premium hikes and negative responses from the private sector (as we saw last week from John Deere, Caterpillar and more) one Republican strategist pledged: “We are going to carve the health care bill up the same way we did the stimulus. Voters are going to be reminded of the bill’s destructive economic impact from now until Election Day.”

The DCCC plans to return Monday to a familiar line of attack against Republican members of Congress, accusing them of trying to have it both ways on the stimulus by supporting local spending from of a measure they opposed. The committee will update its “Hypocrisy Hall of Fame” website to spotlight 128 GOP members of Congress. And after last week’s Republican stampede to support repeal of the health care law, the DCCC will ask in a release: “[W]ill they come out in favor of repealing funding in their congressional districts from President Obama’s economic recovery policies, or will they continue taking credit for jobs and local projects they fought against?”

Also targeted: On the Senate side, Democrats are encouraged by a string of local editorials dinging Sen. Richard Burr for scuttling a hearing with military officers last week in order to support his party’s efforts to delay the health care reconciliation bill. The Greensboro News-Record wrote: “Burr, the Winston-Salem Republican, invoked an odd and obscure parliamentary rule to quash a hearing that would have involved high-ranking U.S. generals from as far away as Korea and Hawaii. … Whoever put the words in Burr’s mouth, the maneuver was petty and ill-conceived. And arcane rules that place party loyalty above the business of the people have as much place in the halls of Congress as ‘No Girlz Allowed’ clubhouses and secret handshakes.” Expect to hear more in this vein from the Democrats this week.