Healthcare summit: Boehner gets hot, Obama plays it cool

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Mt. Boehner just erupted.

The deeply-tanned Republican leader of the House, Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio, must have been biding his time because he just unleashed a broadside against the healthcare bill. And if there was ever any question before whether there was an unbridgeable divide here between the two sides, Boehner put any lingering doubts to rest.

‘This 2,700-page bill will bankrupt the country,’ Boehner declared. ‘This is a dangerous experiment.’

He assailed the requirement that all Americans purchase health insurance as ‘unconstitutional.’ He warned that the bill would result in employers dumping health coverage, forcing employees to go to the new insurance exchanges.

‘I could go and on and on,’ Boehner said. ‘Let’s start with a clean sheet of paper.’ (We’re five and a half hours in, and we’re pretty much where we were this morning, which is,basically, GOP: Start over. Democrats: No.)

President Obama was clearly nonplussed with Boehner. ‘There are so many things you just said that people on this side would profoundly disagree with and based on my analysis is just not true,’ Obama said in the same sort of moderating tone he’s tried to use all day.

Both in Baltimore last month and in the summit here, Obama has shown a willingness to critique Republican arguments in a way that drives many of his detractors crazy. As my colleague Kim Geiger wrote earlier: He’s the teacher, they’re the unruly students. He’ll judge whether an argument is legitimate rather than get into a scorched-earth exchange, sounding like he’s above the fray.

Republicans call it lecturing. Democrats appreciate his restraint. Call it what you will.

-- James Oliphant