Even though I posted the entire video of Dino Rossi's appearance on ABC News's Top Line this morning, his campaign has complained repeatedly to me that I'm not giving enough digital ink to his side of the story.
The story: Rossi today made clear that he wants to repeal both health care reform and financial reform. Which is very interesting news.
Rossi spokesperson Jennifer Morris didn't dispute the development, but she strongly suggested, in several e-mails this afternoon, that I if I examined Rossi's entire remarks on the subject I would find that his overall message "refutes the Dem talking points and your commentary." She added that in the video, Rossi "explains what he’d do instead"—meaning, he explains what he'd replace health care reform and financial reform with.
Really? I just had Stranger intern Logan Gowdey transcribe the relevant portion of the video. Here are Rossi's Top Line remarks in full, as requested by his spokesperson. Questions from the interviewers are in italics:
Another plank in that Contract from America [which you recently signed] says defund and repeal the health care reform bill. We’ve also heard Republican leader in the House, John Boehner say repeal the financial reform bill. Are you in favor, yes or no, of repealing wholesale those bills?We need to repeal that bill. It costs 500 billion dollar tax increase alone cost the Boeing company in my state $150 million, but if you replicate that across the state of WA, there’s tens of thousands of jobs that’ll be lost—that won’t be created, because of Patty Murray’s 60th and deciding vote. We shouldn’t be trying to kill jobs in our state right now. We actually have to reduce premiums, we have to give greater access. I want as many health insurance companies in my state, chasing around my constituents as I can possibly get for their business. They can decide what they want in a plan, versus some bureaucrat in D.C. deciding for them.
So you repeal health care. Do you also repeal Wall Street reform?
I think, first off, we need to make sure we do no harm. What they did is create six super-banks and left the Fannie and Freddie, which were at the epicenter of the problem, out of the deal.
Yes, that’s a repeal?
I think we should. I think we should put reforms in that actually protect the public, and don’t reduce the amount of money that small businesses have available to them to grow, because 64% of job creation since ’92 came from small businesses, and now we’re just killing them.
I don't see much of a counter-proposal on health care reform in there, and I definitely don't see any real counter-proposal on financial reform. Do you?