It’s always a dose of political reality to visit my mother in Virginia. She is represented by Rep. Glenn Nye, a Democrat who voted against the House health care bill earlier this month. He is running ads criticizing Democratic proposals for being too expensive, adding to the nation’s deficits, insufficiently protecting seniors, and promoting other familiar misrepresentations of the Republican Party. In fact, there is discussion of whether Nye might change parties to run in next November’s election.

What’s remarkable about Nye’s objections and similar criticisms of the Senate health care bill is how little credence they seem to pay either to the budget analyses of the Congressional Budget Office or recent surveys of the electorate.

The CBO estimates the Senate health care bill would reduce deficits by around $127 billion over the next decade. The bill finances the coverage of an addition 31 million people by cutting paperwork, unnecessary tests and other wasteful aspects of the health care industry, and by reducing regressive tax subsidies.

It’s interesting that congressional Republicans seem to have forgotten how they roared into action in President George W. Bush’s first term, cutting taxes in 2001 and 2003 without concern about the impact on the deficit. The Bush tax cuts, more than the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and more than Hurricane Katrina cleanup costs, converted our nation’s budget surplus into a deficit. It’s hard to understand how any member of Congress who voted for those tax cuts can criticize the Senate bill, which bipartisan budget analysts say will actually reduce deficits — or at least how they can criticize the bill without shame.

However, Republicans seem to have decided, with the facts against them, to invest in the sort of fear-mongering and outright lies that characterized many Republican assertions in the 2008 presidential campaign. With health care lobbyists pouring money into ads, they are trying to scare a few Senate Democrats into opposing the Senate health care bill. They hope to find fertile ground in Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska. But before these senators cave in to the pressure of the insurance industry and Republican agents thereof, they should read carefully Republican talking points around political expediency, which is to say electability.

The Republican health care website asserts, “The American people have spoken. They oppose government-run health care. Republicans are on the side of the American people.” Actually, the senators should read the most recent Associated Press polls, which show growing support, with 40 percent supporting the emerging congressional proposals, and 40 percent opposing them. This is an increase from the 34 percent support of two months ago. As proposals receive more factual scrutiny, and despite the industry-supported political ads screaming their opposition, public support is building, including for the much-contested public option.

One blogger recently wrote Rep. Nye, “Don’t let them bully you. Fight for your own. No government health care. Fix it, but don’t take our rights away.”

Unfortunately, the blogger’s assumption that a public option would remove choice in medical care reflects the success of the Republican disinformation campaign. But the blogger was right to urge members of Congress not to be bullied. This is the moment when members of Congress need to trust the basic good sense of the public and believe that they will be re-elected if they stand up to the coercive messages of the health insurance industry and Republican leadership, for whom no scare tactic currently appears too dishonest.

Margaret Krome of Madison writes a semimonthly column for The Capital Times. mkrome@sbcglobal.net

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