Taegan Goddard's Political Wire

August 12, 2009

Murkowski Blasts Palin on "Death Panels"

In a jab at Sarah Palin, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said that "critics of health care reform, the summer's hottest political topic, aren't helping the debate by throwing out highly charged assertions not based in fact," the Anchorage Daily News reports.

Said Murkowski: "It does us no good to incite fear in people by saying that there's these end-of-life provisions, these death panels. Quite honestly, I'm so offended at that terminology because it absolutely isn't (in the bill). There is no reason to gin up fear in the American public by saying things that are not included in the bill."

Meanwhile, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the ranking Republican member of the Senate Finance Committee, used similar fear tactics at a recently town hall meeting, according to Radio Iowa.

Said Grassley: "We should not have a government program that determines you're going to pull the plug on Grandma."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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