US News

GOP forms tactics to torpedo Dems

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans were girding for battle yesterday as they plotted new strategies to try to take down President Obama’s health plan, repeal it, or tie it up in legal knots.

Just hours after the House passed a landmark overhaul, Republican strategies to fight back were emerging, even as Obama and the Democrats savored their biggest victory yet.

“There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year,” fumed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on an Arizona radio station. “They have poisoned the well in what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.”

“Outside the Beltway, the American people are very angry and they don’t like it and we are going to try to repeal this,” McCain told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Likely presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who pushed a health plan through when he was Massachusetts governor, called the bill an “unconscionable abuse of power” and called for its repeal, as lawmakers introduced legislation to do just that.

Republicans honed their death-by-amendment strategy yesterday to try to blow a hole in Part II of health reform — a 2,000-page “reconciliation” making major changes.

The plan: knock out a section, a paragraph — or even a comma — in order to force House members to cast another uncomfortable vote.

Under a deal that had many House Democrats on edge, the House relented to a Senate-passed health-care bill, while Dem leaders said 51 party members promised to pass a bill to fix it.

Republicans say they are preparing hundreds of amendments, including tort-law reforms, letting consumers buy health insurance across state lines, and tax credits for businesses that offer wellness and fitness programs to employees.