Brody Mullins reports on Congress.
Republican lawmakers on Sunday said the House’s approval of a sweeping health-care bill, passed with the support of only one Republican, showed that Democrats had misinterpreted the results of last week’s gubernatorial elections.
Republicans appearing on the Sunday morning talk shows said GOP wins in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races last Tuesday showed that Americans are opposed to new government spending and programs.
Tuesday’s votes were “an effort by the American people to send a message to [Democrats] that they are tired of the borrowing, the spending, the bailouts, the takeovers,” Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But last night, on a narrow, partisan vote, the Democrats put their liberal, big-government agenda ahead of the American people.”
Democrats said Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections were not a referendum on a health-care overhaul or other national issues. Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who is chairman of the House Democratic campaign arm, said the races in Virginia and New Jersey were fought over local issues, such as property taxes, not national issues like health-care and federal stimulus programs .
He said the only elections last week that were based on national issues were the two special U.S. congressional elections in California and New York. Democrats won in both races. The lesson that Democrats took from those elections was that “it’s time to fix what’s been a broken health-care system,” the Maryland Democrat said.
The two Democrats who won House seats last week voted for the health-care legislation, which cleared the House, 220-215, on Saturday night.
Bob McDonnell, the Republican who won Tuesday’s gubernatorial election in Virginia, told “Fox News Sunday” that his victory showed that voters were concerned about the direction of the country under Democratic control.
He said voters in Virginia told him: “We’re concerned about what’s going on at the federal level, we like your fiscal conservative message in Virginia on taxes and spending, and that’s why we’re voting for you.”
On ABC News’s “This Week,” outgoing Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine, a Democrat, said voters showed during the 2008 elections that they wanted a more-activist government. He said the Republican Party has become the “party of ‘No,’” and that Republicans had done nothing to help the economy or improve health-care.
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