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 While Congress is in recess for the July 4th holiday, CPR is running new ads in ten states asking the Senators in those states to not let government bureaucrats come between a patient and their doctor. You can see the ads here. |
Gibbs Says Questions on Obama Tax Pledge Are Speculative
Keith Koffler - Roll Call
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Monday declined to reaffirm President Barack Obama's pledge not to raise taxes on families earning under $250,000 per year, calling questions about the promise -- asked in the context of a possible tax on health benefits -- speculative.Gibbs asserted it would by "hypothetical" to talk about raising health benefit taxes because lawmakers have not approved health reform legislation and Obama has not yet been put in the position of having to decide whether to back such a tax "We're going to let Congress do its job," Gibbs said.
Obama Steers Health Care Debate Out Of Capital
Sheryl Gay Stolberg - The New York Times
Sheryl Gay Stolberg - The New York Times
With Democrats deeply divided over health legislation, President Obama is trying to enlist the nation's governors and his own army of grass-roots supporters in a bid to increase pressure on lawmakers without getting himself mired in the messy battle playing out on Capitol Hill.In a meeting last week with five governors -- including Republicans who may be more sympathetic to health legislation than those on Capitol Hill -- Mr. Obama privately urged them to serve as his emissaries to Congress. He even coached them on the language they should use with lawmakers, two of the governors said, advising them to avoid terms like "rationing" and "managed care," which evoke bitter memories of the Clintons' ill-fated health initiative. The hourlong session in the Roosevelt Room was part of an intensifying but potentially risky White House strategy to shift the health care debate away from Washington and to the states. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama will travel to Virginia to hold a town-hall-style meeting on health care -- his second in two weeks -- that will include questions from online communities like Facebook and Twitter.
Despite Majority, Obama to Be Tested
Shailagh Murray and Dan Balz - The Washington Post
After a series of early and relatively easy victories on Capitol Hill, the White House appears certain to face a more difficult road when Congress returns to work next week. Not content to task lawmakers with passing an ambitious agenda of record new spending, sweeping health-care reform and other major initiatives, President Obama yesterday nudged the Senate to move ahead with its version of a landmark energy bill the House passed on Friday. In recent weeks, he has also revived the idea of pursuing broad changes in immigration law. Obama and his aides have proved adept at navigating the politics and eccentricities of the legislative branch. But as lawmakers attempt to navigate much trickier and more contentious issues in the second half of the year, the narrow margin of Friday's energy vote served as a warning: The higher the stakes, the tougher the challenge in finding consensus within what has become a diverse Democratic majority.
Parties Spar Over How Obama's Doing
Kara Rowland - The Washington Times
The accomplishments of President Obama and his allies in Congress over his first six months in office are -- depending on whom is asked -- either tackling the recession and heralding a new era of progressive reform or bankrupting the nation with unprecedented speed. Either way, the new administration and congressional Democrats have spent the first half of the year pushing through key elements of Mr. Obama's economic agenda, though the fate of his two biggest priorities, energy and health care reform, still hang very much in the balance. Republicans insist that the more the public learns about the Democrats' agenda -- and how much it will cost -- the better their opposition will look. "The public is becoming very aware of what's happening here in Washington and the amount of spending, the amount of borrowing, and the amount of taxing that's occurring," said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, new head of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, last week.
Jennifer MQ - Beltway Snark
I pressed Axelrod on whether Obama will draw a line in the sand and veto any bill that funds health care reform with tax hikes for people making under $250,000 a year -- a pledge Barack Obama made during the 2008 presidential campaign. "One of the problems we've had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other. And you don't get anything done. That's not the way the president approaches us. He is very cognizant of protecting people -- middle class people, hard-working people who are trying to get along in a very difficult economy. And he will continue to represent them in these talks," Axelrod said."But they're also dealing with punishing health care costs, and that's something that we have to deal with." This brings up to a point I've made before but it bears repeating here; with Pokulus, auto bailouts, bank bailouts, and now healthcare reform ballooning the deficit to an astronomical number so early in Obama's presidency there is no way he will be able to put off tax hikes until his second term. There's no way we can sustain this kind of deficit for three and a half years without completely ruining America's credit. Some people just can't learn from the mistakes of others.
Obama Shouldn't Break One Promise To Fulfill Another
HCastro - To The Center
I very much hope that this is exactly why Axelrod wouldn't reaffirm Obama's earlier promise, but I can't say I think that this is likely. Rather, I think that Obama and his advisors are realizing that the amount of money required for Obama's health care reform, an estimated $1 trillion, isn't exactly easy to find for new government assistance programs. I would be highly disappointed if Obama reneges on his campaign promises to cover the already-controversial health care reform that tops off his agenda. What he should do is scale back the reform into a more manageable program that he could find the funds for without breaking promises. He has four years in office, or possibly eight if he gets reelected, so he should use his time wisely and practice one of the most essential rules of fiscal responsibility: don't do anything you can't afford. He has the time to increase the scale of the reform over his years in office as he finds more creative ways to raise money, and as he cuts back on current programs over the years.
Has Daschle Gone Rogue?
Richard Wolffe - The Daily Beast
The reason he's not pleasing Obama right now: the reform blueprint he negotiated with two former GOP Senate leaders, Bob Dole and Howard Baker. It includes compromises that some Democrats, including several inside the White House, are still uncomfortable with. Daschle's big compromise was to weaken the so-called public option, making the federal government a fallback in case state governments fail to establish so-called insurance exchanges. Those exchanges are intended to allow patients to compare plans in a clear way, encouraging more competition between insurers to drive down costs. White House insiders weren't necessarily expecting the South Dakota Democrat to carry their water. But after his nomination debacle, they weren't expecting major differences, either. Now there's a feeling that he's gotten out ahead of them. "Everyone loves Daschle," says one senior Obama aide. "But he's making compromises we don't want to. We just take a different view right now."
Democrats Have No Endgame
HughS - Wizbang
There is no doubt that some voters have already noticed the deceit and evidence has been out there for weeks that President Obama is walking back his pledge to not raise taxes on the middle class. The mirage of green shoots of economic recovery is apparently sedating the Washington/New York pundit class into a stupor just as deep as the one they fell into last year during the election. The dumbfounding aspect of the national discussion on Obama/Pelosi/Reid economic policy is that no one is demanding to know what their endgame is. A recipe of higher taxes, historic spending and massive federal borrowing will deliver economic collapse and currency collapse. Where is the policy that provides incentives for private sector growth? Cap and Trade? Nope. Health care reform? Nope. Massive middle and upper middle class tax increases? Nope. Bank bailouts? Nope. Stimulus spending? Nope. There is not a single Obama policy being considered or recently enacted that promotes the private sector growth necessary to create tax revenues sufficient to pay for the above. The same can be said for the lack of incentives to create jobs. While President Obama and Congress remain knee deep in the hoopla of their grand schemes no one is asking them about their endgame.
Unions May Get a Pass On Health Care Benefits Tax
Robert Lawszewski - The Health Care Blog
Carving unions out of any deal to tax health insurance benefits would be outrageous. First, such a new tax would not alter any collective bargaining agreements--it would only change how those earnings would be taxed. Second, since when have unions become a special class? Every new tax increase I've ever been subject to was on something--my income, my house, my property--that was either set or owned well before the new tax was passed. This is tantamount to a smoker telling us the new tobacco tax to pay for the childrens' health plan shouldn't apply to him because he developed his addiction to cigarettes before the tax was passed. I now think I understand how the Chrysler and GM bondholders felt when they were forced to give up their priority bankruptcy claims in favor of the Unions' retiree health care fund.
Queen Nancy Says No To Transparency On Obamacare Bill
Staff - Stop The ACLU
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-CA) will not give the public a week to review the final text of a health-care reform bill before it is voted on later this year. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) has also declined to commit to giving the public a week to read and consider the final health-care bill. At her press briefing on Thursday, Pelosi was asked whether the health-care bill would be handled differently than the stimulus bill, which came up in February. The 1,071-page final text of that bill was posted on the House Appropriations Committee's Web site late on a Thursday night and then voted on the next day. "When the stimulus bill came out earlier this year, members and citizens had less than two days to review the final version that came out of the conference committee before it was voted on," CNSNews.com asked Pelosi on Thursday. "Will you commit to giving Americans at least a week to review the full conference version of the health care bill before it is voted on? And also will you commit to submitting the final version to the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] so that they can report the cost to the public?" Pelosi would not commit to giving the public a week to review the bill, and did not respond to the question of having the CBO report on the cost of the final bill.