GOP Leaders' Goal: Make Sure Health Bill 'Never Becomes Law'

If Republicans want to get away from the "Party of No" label that Democrats have tried to stick them with all year, it wasn't apparent in the Capitol on Wednesday: Two top GOP leaders, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona and Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, said that their objective on health care reform is to stop the Democrats in their tracks.

"Our goal . . . is to see that this never becomes law," Kyl said of the Democratic proposals to overhaul the health care system, which could get a vote in the House as early as next week. "We should instead stop and start over, as 73 percent of the American people want us to do. Either stop or stop and start over."

Kyl said there is no political downside for Republicans in pulling out every maneuver they can think of to stop or delay the Democrats' progress. "There's never a problem giving the American people an opportunity to express themselves on a piece of legislation that they care a lot about. . . . The more opportunity they have to do that, the better."

Cantor agreed. "Certainly the American people want to see results, but they don't want bad results," he said. "This best result would be to make sure that this Senate bill does not pass the House."

Both men said they'd like to see Democrats scrap their massive health reform bill and sit down with Republicans to craft a narrower approach based on bringing down the cost of health care.

But that is highly unlikely. Last week, President Obama called on Congress to act on health care reform in the next several weeks and rejected the idea of starting over.

"Everything there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everyone has said it," he said. "Now is the time to make a decision."