Let the games begin...
Rep. John Kline is among the 21 lawmakers who scored an invite to President Obama's bipartisan health care summit later this month.
The televised meeting has been hyped in recent weeks as "end-game" for Obama's health care agenda, as it may be the president's last chance to win public support for the plan. The White House released a list of invitees this afternoon.
Kline, a four-term Republican, is the ranking minority member of the House Education and Labor committee, one of three bodies in the House with jurisdiction over the health care bill.
He has repeatedly called for Democrats to hit "the reset button" on health care, but Republicans have voiced skepticism in recent weeks that the White House will be willing to start the process anew.
"He is hopeful this summit will provide a long-overdue opportunity to start from scratch with a blank piece of paper – the starting point cannot be the same job-killing bill Democrats promoted the past year," Kline spokester Troy Young wrote in an e-mail.
Young said earlier this week that Kline believes there are certain "basic principles for health reform" that members of both sides can agree upon.
Those principles include, Young said, ensuring people with pre-existing conditions "are able to obtain affordable coverage," tort reform, allowing people to stay on their parents' health care plans until they're 25, enabling self-employed people to deduct health care expenses and allowing businesses to band together to offer coverage at lower rates.
