Grassley on White House Admonitions, Fighting “Obamacare”

ABC News' Z. Byron Wolf reports: Sen. Charles Grassley’s office is firing back at White House adviser David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs for saying the three Republican negotiators still seeking a bipartisan health reform compromise are not coming to the table in good faith.

“If you’re sitting at a table negotiating in good faith, then you probably don’t send out mailers saying, ‘Help me stop Obama-care.’ That’s just common sense,” Axelrod told the Wall Street Journal, adding that a fundraising mailer sent by Grassleyand a speech made over the weekend by Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming “suggested they don’t want to participate” in bipartisan talks. “They’re satisfied with the status quo. We are not,” said Axelrod.

“Attacks by political operatives in the White House undermine bipartisan efforts and drive senators away from the table,” said Grassley’s spokesperson Jill Kozeny in an email today.

She also explained the fundraising letter:

“The Grassley fundraising letter was mailed on August 7. It describes Senator Grassley’s opposition to the government-run plan in the House and HELP committee bills. The President supports a government-run option. Senator Grassley has opposed a government-run plan all year. He’s talked with the President about it directly, starting March 6, at the White House summit on health care, during the televised re-cap session at the end of the day. There’s nothing new in the letter. It says the same thing Senator Grassley has said throughout the debate this year.

In a conference call with Iowa reporters that was posted on his Senate website Tuesday.Grassley, R-Iowa,employed a near-Rumsfeldian definition of “Obamacare” to explain the fundraising letter, which was posted on the Washington Post website Monday.

A reporter asked Grassley about trying to raise funds to help him defeat Obamacare.

“What is Obamacare?” the reporter asked him.

Grassley: “There isn’t really a bill out there but people think there’s a bill out there and people in journalism think there’s a bill out there because they keep referring to Obamacare just like some magic bill came up from the White House that Congress is considering. So if people think everything we’re doing is Obamacare, then it's Obamacare whether it really is or isn’t.”

Reporter: “Aren’t you raising money based on the fact that you’re asking people to give you money to fight against something that in this committee you are…”

Grassley: “Oh no. No, it’s the two bills that are out there. We don’t have a product out there that anybody can look at or anything that I could speak about. You’re talking about the bill of Sen. Dodd’s committee, used to be Sen. Kennedy’s committee, a very partisan bill. And you’re talking about the House bill that Pelosi is going to be putting together that came out of Rep. Waxman’s committee.

“And these are the bills, quite frankly, if you want something that is the essence of Obamacare even though it didn’t come from the White House, it’s the House bill mainly that’s on the Internet, that people are reading and they don’t like.”

With Axelrod and Gibbs turning their aim at Grassley, he is officially getting it from both sides. In a separate interview, posted on the website of the Kaiser Family Foundation, he acknowledged that there is frustration among Republicans that he continues to seek middle ground.

Asked if he had been criticized by Republican leaders for seeking bipartisanship, Grassley said, “Not to my face, but I think to my back, I have.”

ABC News’ Huma Khan reports: He may have been the Senate?s ?liberal lion,? but Ted Kennedy?s friends included a long line of Republicans on the extreme end of the political aisle.

?We were like fighting brothers for all these years…. We always made up at the end, we always laughed about it afterwards and hug each other but I have to admit the first few years were really really rough,? said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. ?Even though we fought over all kinds of language, all kinds of approaches towards legislation, we worked it out.?

The two, who became good friends despite their disagreements, came together many times over music. When Kennedy and Hatch couldn?t agree on an issue, the late senator sent his aides to sing to his staunchly conservative friend. And in his memory, the Republican senator penned a song Wednesday as a tribute toKennedy. It wasn?t the first. Hatch said on ?Good Morning America? that he wrote a song called ?Souls Along the Way?– featured in the movie Ocean?s 13 — when Kennedy married his wife, Vicki, in 1992.

?I just feel deeply towards the man,? Hatch said. ?Through those fights we honed legislation that has really become landmark legislation.?

“He was one heck of a legislator, one heck of a friend,? he added.

Despite their ideological differences, Hatch said he could always count on Kennedy once they made a deal and that the Massachusetts senator was always open to compromise.

?Many times he would come across the center, and I?d have to go to the center,? Hatch added. ?We passed almost every important health care bill in the last 33 years.?

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who knew Kennedy for a quarter century, said the image that will ingrained in him is that of a ?happy warrior? on the Senate floor.

?Many times there was no need for the microphone system, we all heard him very clearly,? McCain recalled. ?As soon as his passion was subsided, which would be after he finished speaking, he returned to the gregarious and friendly individual that he was. Ted Kennedy?s word was his bond… that?s not as true as some might believe about the United States Senate.?

Kennedy was praised by many for his bipartisan work, and McCain said he hopes the health care debate will create a ?spirit of compromise? going forward.

?I feel a personal responsibility to try to conduct myself the way that Ted Kennedy did on a broad variety of issues, and that is to be willing to sit down and work with the other side of the aisle,? McCain said on ?GMA.? ?Whether he won or lost he was always in the game.?

McCain willgive a eulogyat Kennedy?s memorial service on Friday. The former presidential candidate said he doesn?t know yet what he?ll say but that ?I just hope I can do him justice or some measure of justice.?