Giving this week’s GOP address, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) bashed Democratic efforts to reform health care as a “bitter, destructive, and endless drive to completely transform America’s healthcare system.” Saying Democrats should scrap their plan and start over, Brown said, “This, above all, was the message that the people of my state sent to the president and the Congress in the election over a month ago.”

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod responded to Brown’s comments on ABC’s This Week, noting that that Brown’s state has a health care plan that is very similar “to the one we’re trying to enact here,” and Brown “voted for it”:

AXELROD: Let me note that Senator Brown comes from a state that has a health care format in his state that is similar to the one we’re trying to enact here. People in his state are overwhelmingly in support of it. He voted for it and said he wouldn’t repeal it. So we’re just trying to give the people in america the same opportunities that the people in Massachusetts have. To get health insurance at a price they can afford. This bill is important for the American people.

Appearing after him, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called Axelrod’s comments “complete spin” and said, “no way in the world is what they did in Massachusetts like what we’re about to do in Washington:”

GRAHAM: And the interview I just heard is spin, campaigning. I thought the campaign was over. Are you trying to tell me and the American people that Scott Brown got elected campaigning against a Washington bill that really is just like the Massachusetts bill? The American people are getting tired of this crap. No way in the world is what they did in Massachusetts like what we’re about to do in Washington. We didn’t cut Medicare — they didn’t cut Medicare when they passed the bill in Massachusetts. They didn’t raise $500 billion on the American people when they passed the bill in Massachusetts. To suggest that Scott Brown is basically campaigning against the bill in Washington that is like the one in Massachusetts is complete spin.

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In fact, the plan implemented by former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts is very similar to the Democratic proposal. Both plans require people to purchase coverage and both provide affordability credits to those who can’t afford insurance. Both create insurance exchanges, both establish minimum creditable coverage standards for insurers, and both require employers to contribute towards reform. The Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky created a chart outlining the similarities between Romney’s plan and the Senate bill that passed in December and will become the foundation of national health care reform.

Graham cites only two issues to support his claim: Medicare cuts and tax raises “on the American people.” But of course, no state has the authority to either change Medicare or raises taxes on all Americans.

Even conservatives see the similarities between the two plans. “[T]he public option has now vanished from the Obama plan. Which means that the federal plan bears a closer family resemblance than ever to Romney’s idea,” former Bush speech writer David Frum observed. American Spectator’s Philip Klein said there “ain’t” any substantial differences between the plans. The key parts of the Democratic proposal are the same as “those elements [that] formed the core of Romneycare,” Klein adds.

The Republican minority in the Senate has used and abused the practice of filibusters to obstruct the Democrats’ agenda. The number of Senate cloture votes, which require a supermajority of 60, “more than doubled — from 54 to 112 — from the 109th Congress (2005-2006) to the 110th (2007-2008), according to the Senate historical office.” James Fallows points to this Wikipedia chart for evidence of how “a-historical the current Senate practice” is:

The White House is giving new indications that it is preparing to go to battle against this abuse. At a fundraiser last week, Vice President Joe Biden said, “No democracy has survived needing a supermajority.”

Biden’s communications director, Jay Carney, further made the case: “When one looks at the soaring number of cloture votes required to do business in the Senate — double the numbers of a decade ago, triple the numbers of 20 years ago — it raises a legitimate question about whether this power is being used to protect the minority or merely to obstruct action and progress.”

In an interview today with TV One’s Roland Martin, White House senior adviser David Axelrod waded into the controversy:

“The Republican strategy in the Senate is to turn 50 into 60, in other words no longer do you need a majority to carry the day in the Senate. You need 60 votes for everything because the Republicans are filibustering every single bill,” he said. “We need to call that out, and they need to explain to the American people whether throwing a wrench into everything at a time of national emergency is the appropriate policy. They want to win and election and take us back to the policies that got us into this mess in the first place.”

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) has proposed legislation that would gradually lower the number of votes the Senate majority would need to block filibusters from 60 to, ultimately, a simple majority. More and more Democratic Senators appear to be increasingly agitated about the issue. Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) told blogger-activist Mike Stark this week that the Democratic caucus was “working through” how to get around the 60-vote threshold for moving legislation. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) told Rachel Maddow this past week that she “would love” to change the filibuster rule, but that it’s “not realistic.” And today on ABC’s This Week, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) railed against the Republicans’ “unprecedented” use of the filibuster.

Appearing on separate Sunday political talk shows, two key Obama advisers — David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel — were asked about the White House’s recent verbal attacks against Fox News. Both advisers made the point that Fox is not a legitimate news outlet, but rather a network with a biased perspective. And the advisers emphasized that traditional news media should not let themselves be swayed by Fox’s opinion coverage:

AXELROD: The bigger thing is other news organizations like yours [ABC News] ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way.

EMANUEL: And more importantly, is not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led and following Fox, as if what they’re trying to do is a legitimate news organization.

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On Monday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs used his daily press briefing to criticize “Gang of Six” health care negotiator Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) for attacking Democratic health care proposals with “generic Republican talking points” when he delivered the weekly Republican radio address on Saturday. “I think Sen. Enzi’s clearly turned over his cards on bipartisanship and decided that it’s time to walk away from the table,” said Gibbs. Now, another top White House aide has dug into Enzi as well as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who recently sent a fundraising appeal saying he was working to “defeat ‘Obama-care.’” In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, senior adviser David Axelrod said the two senators appeared to be “satisfied with the status quo“:

“If you’re sitting at a table negotiating in good faith, then you probably don’t send out mailers saying, ‘Help me stop Obama-care.’ That’s just common sense,” Mr. Axelrod said. The two senators’ actions, he said, “suggested they don’t want to participate” in bipartisan talks. “They’re satisfied with the status quo. We are not,” Mr. Axelrod said.

Bloomberg’s Ed Chen reports that two of Obama’s top advisers — Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod – “may rely only on Democrats to push health-care legislation through the U.S. Congress if Republican resistance doesn’t eventually give way.” For months, the White House has underscored its interest in achieving bipartisan health care reform. But as conservatives remained wedded to an obstructionist agenda, the White House is now conceding that it may have to rely on Democratic votes to pass reform:

“Ultimately, this is not about a process, it’s about results,” David Axelrod, Obama’s senior political strategist, said during an interview yesterday in his White House office. “If we’re going to get this thing done, obviously time is a- wasting.” […]

“We’d like to do it with the votes of members of both parties,” Axelrod said. “But the worst result would be to not get health-care reform done.” […]

“That’s a test of bipartisanship — whether you took ideas from both parties,” Emanuel said. “At the end of the day, the test isn’t whether they voted for it,” he said, referring to Republicans. “The test is whether the final product represented some of their ideas. And I think it will.”

As former Gov. Howard Dean has been arguing, “If Republicans want to shill for insurance companies, then we should do it with 51 votes.” In the interview, Emanuel left the door open to using reconciliation “as an alternative vehicle.”

Update

Drudge offers this sensationalized headline:

In recent days, several of President Bush’s closest advisers have been attacking President Obama. Vice Preisdent Cheney, for example, said that there was “a high probability” of a WMD attack if Bush’s policies were reversed, and former chief of staff Andy Card said that Obama has turned the White House into a “locker room” because he isn’t requiring staff to wear jackets at all times. Axelrod sharply responds to the “tasteless” criticisms in a new interview with the Washington Post:

I was disappointed in the Vice President’s comments, not because he said–stated the obvious which is that there are threats that are grave, but that he suggested that somehow the President’s decisions on torture in Guantanamo would increase the likelihood of that. [...]

You know, the last thing that I think we’re looking for at this juncture is advice on fiscal integrity or ethics from Karl Rove, anyone who’s read the newspapers for the last eight years would laugh at that.

So, I appreciate that President Bush has been so classy during this period, and I’m disappointed that some of the folks who worked for him didn’t–don’t share that. [...]

I mentioned Andy Card saying that we were somehow denigrating the Presidency because people were wearing short sleeves in the Oval Office. We’re wearing short sleeves because we have to roll up our sleeves and clean up the mess that we inherited.