Obama admits health care overhaul may die on Hill
February 6th, 2010 . by TexasFredWASHINGTON (AP) – No, maybe he can’t. President Barack Obama, who insisted he would succeed where other presidents had failed to fix the nation’s health care system, now concedes the effort may die in Congress.The president’s newly conflicting signals could frustrate Democratic lawmakers who are hungry for guidance from the White House as they try to salvage the effort to extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans and hold down spiraling medical costs. Obama’s comments Thursday night came hours after Republican Scott Brown was sworn in to replace the late Edward M. Kennedy, leaving Democrats without their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and Obama’s signature health legislation with no clear path forward.
“I think it’s very important for us to have a methodical, open process over the next several weeks, and then let’s go ahead and make a decision,” Obama said at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser.
“And it may be that … if Congress decides we’re not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not,” the president said. “And that’s how democracy works. There will be elections coming up, and they’ll be able to make a determination and register their concerns.”
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Obama admits health care overhaul may die on Hill
Have you ever noticed? The most important news stories, the ones that the media or the White House doesn’t want you to see, seem to come out late on Friday afternoon?
I have known this for a long time, that’s why I like to watch the late Friday PM news so closely, I get some of my best material for commentary that way.
It appeared to be a shift in tone for the issue the “Yes we can” candidate campaigned on and made the centerpiece of his domestic agenda last year. In a speech to a joint session of Congress in September, Obama declared: “I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. … Here and now we will meet history’s test.”
Obama won’t be the last. He’s going to keep on pushing this. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will keep on pushing and encouraging him as long as they are in the Senate and House.
Under normal conditions, I greatly admire tenacity. It takes a lot of guts to march into the belly of the beast and fight for your cause. It helps if the people are behind you too. But in this case, in regards to ObamaCare, I don’t think it’s so much tenacity as it is Democratic moonbattery!
The American people, the MAJORITY of American people, don’t want this debacle of a health care bill to pass. For some reason, Obama, Reid and Pelosi just can’t get it through their heads.
“The next step is what I announced at the State of the Union, which is to call on our Republican friends to present their ideas. What I’d like to do is have a meeting whereby I’m sitting with the Republicans, sitting with the Democrats, sitting with health care experts, and let’s just go through these bills. … And then I think that we’ve got to go ahead and move forward on a vote,” Obama said Thursday shortly after a White House meeting with Democratic congressional leaders that produced no apparent progress on health care.
Let me translate that for you: “The next step is what I announced at the State of the Union, which is to call on our Republican friends to present their ideas.” equates to, ‘OK, we locked the GOP out on this and we have totally screwed it up. Let’s give THEM a shot at it and if THEY do a fine job of making this feasible, WE take the credit. If they screw up worse than we did, then we place the blame for failure on THEM!’.
