» Sign up to receive the Daily Dose by email every weekday
Sam Youngman - The Hill
House liberals pressed President Barack Obama on healthcare reform Thursday and left the White House without making any commitments to vote for the final bill. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, told The Hill that liberals challenged Obama on the lack of a public health insurance option and other provisions in the Senate bill the president has endorsed.
Maybe no health care bill vote by Easter
Erica Werner - Real Clear Politics
House Democratic leaders are pushing to finish far-reaching health legislation and hold a climactic vote in the next three weeks, aiming to overcome reluctance from rank-and-file lawmakers. But they conceded Thursday they may not meet President Barack Obama's challenge for swift action. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said the Democrats would like to get a final vote by Congress' Easter break, which begins March 29. But he also said "the world doesn't fall apart" if that timeline isn't met -- a nod to the many missed deadlines that have characterized the health overhaul effort so far.
Obama Takes Health Care Deadline to Democrats
Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Robert Pear - New York Times
President Obama, beginning a full-court press for his health care overhaul, met Thursday with insurance industry executives and House Democrats as party leaders on Capitol Hill struggled to figure out whether they could meet the president's timetable for enacting legislation within a few weeks. One day after Mr. Obama vowed to do "everything in my power" to get a bill passed, his health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, convened insurance executives at the White House and pressed them to release actuarial data justifying their rate increases. The president stopped by -- an appearance that was unscheduled, but clearly orchestrated -- to deliver a letter from an Ohio cancer survivor who had dropped her insurance after a 40 percent rate increase.
Fact Check: Obama approach at odds with past views
Calvin Woodward - Associated Press
President Barack Obama is trying to achieve a health care overhaul the way he once said it couldn't, and shouldn't, be done. He now wants congressional Democrats to move ahead without Republican support and pass the legislation with a bare majority in the Senate instead of the broader majority he favored as a presidential candidate. To be sure, Obama has tried to get Republicans behind him. Having failed, he's reverting to a "50-plus-one" strategy that he called a losing proposition -- because "you can't govern" with it -- back when he was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Analysis: Obama the 'outsider' from inside DC
Ron Fournier - Associated Press
The throw-the-bums-out mentality is so strong in American politics that even the ultimate insider -- the president of the United States -- is running against Washington. Casting yourself as an outsider from inside the White House is no easy trick, especially when your party controls both houses of Congress. But that doesn't stop Barack Obama from trying. "At stake right now is not just our ability to solve this problem," Obama said Wednesday, referring to the U.S. health care system, "but our ability to solve any problem. The American people want to know if it's still possible for Washington to look out for their interests and their future."
Howard Dean: Health bill hangs Dem incumbents and Obama out to dry in elections
Michael O'Brien - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room
Passing the healthcare proposals before Congress will "hang out to dry" every Democratic incumbent running for reelection this fall, Howard Dean said Thursday. Dean, a physician by training who's a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), said that Democrats in Congress -- and President Barack Obama -- would do themselves more harm than good by passing the current healthcare bill.
Obama Tells Liberal Public Option Doesn't Have Votes
Greg Sargent - The Plum Line
In a private meeting at the White House this afternoon, Obama told a roomful of House Dems he doesn't think the votes are there to pass the public option, and urged them to take the long view and to support the Senate bill as merely the beginning of reform, Dem Rep Lynn Woolsey tells me. Also: Obama thanked the assembled, mostly liberals, for their ongoing insistence from the left over the months that the bill be improved, Woolsey says. "He thanked us," she recalled. "He said the bill wouldn't have been nearly as good as it is if we hadn't advocated."
Healthcare reform: Three ways the House may derail Obama's plans
Peter Grier - Christian Science Monitor
President Obama has begun his final lobbying push for healthcare reform. That is why he is meeting Thursday with different groups of wavering House Democrats. Mr. Obama knows he must overcome the concerns of rank-and-file representatives of his own party if he is to win a climactic House vote and sign his top domestic priority into law this spring. House majority leader Steny Hoyer said Thursday that Democrats would like to finish healthcare legislation by the beginning of Easter break, March 29. It's possible that could slip, however.
Obama Pleads With Dems to Pass His Health Bill
Associated Press
President Barack Obama summoned more than a dozen Democrats from the House of Representatives to the White House, pleading with them to put aside their qualms and vote for his massive health care overhaul. In back-to-back meetings Thursday, Obama urged uneasy rank-and-file moderates and progressives to focus on the positives rather than their deep disappointment with parts of the bill. The lawmakers said Obama assured them the legislation was merely the first step, and he promised to work with them in the future to improve its provisions.
Obama intensifies health-care efforts
Michael D. Shear - Washington Post
An aide to President Obama urged lawmakers on Thursday to make substantial progress on his health-care plan before he leaves on a foreign trip in mid-March, as Obama summoned wavering House Democrats to the White House for a private sales pitch. The president also made a surprise visit to insurance company chief executives, brandishing a letter from a cancer patient as he admonished them about what he has called excessive rate increases.
What's the deadline for health reform?
Ben Pershing - Washington Post's 44
"If you don't set a deadline in this town, nothing happens," President Obama said last July, and John Dickerson later noted that Obama "has a professor's fondness for deadlines and a writer's lack of respect for them." So it makes sense that the White House appeared to set a deadline for completion of health care Thursday and then revise it the same day.
Herseth Sandlin says no to Senate health bill, reconciliation
Ken Woster - Rapid City Journal
Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin left little doubt Thursday about her intentions on health care reform legislation, after Republican charges that she is wavering on the issue. Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., confirmed during a telephone conference call with reporters that she won't vote for the U.S. Senate version of health care reform, just as she didn't vote for an earlier version approved by the House of Representatives.
Democrats can use the help of Republicans on health care reform
Kathleen Parker - Sun Sentinel
For all our bemoaning the tortures of health care reform, the debate has been healthy for the nation. Everybody's crazy aunts and uncles have been let out of their respective attics and basements, and it's good to know who they are. It's also been helpful for Americans to see how the sausage is made and figure out whether they really want any. Last week's summit was not wasted time, despite criticism that it was only political theater. What's wrong with that? I like theater. I especially like the tiny details and what they tell us. In theater, as in life, details matter.
Abortion and the Health Bill
Charmaine Yoest - Wall Street Journal
It's now becoming clear that Barack Obama is willing to put everything on the table in order to be the president who passes health-care reform. Everything, that is, except a ban on federal funding for abortion. Last September, the president promised that "no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place." Yet the legislation most likely to move forward in Congress would be the single greatest expansion of abortion since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Re: Only the House Vote Matters
Yuval Levin - NRO's The Corner
It's worth reiterating something Rich and Jeff Anderson have pointed out: The focus on reconciliation in the past few days confuses things a bit. The question in the health-care debate at the moment is whether Nancy Pelosi can get enough of her members to vote for the version of Obamacare that passed the Senate late last year. If the House passes that bill, it will have passed both houses, will go to the president, and will become law.
Lieberman Says He's Undecided About Health Care Reform
Christopher Keating and Daniela Altimari - Hartford Courant
U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman said Thursday that he is now undecided on health care reform -- adding that he is concerned that Democrats might use the "reconciliation" process to pass reform with 51 votes in the Senate. "I'm undecided at this point how I will vote," Lieberman said in a conference call Thursday with Connecticut newspaper reporters. Despite saying that many of the provisions in the bill are "good and important," Lieberman is now on the fence because of the reconciliation process. The idea of passing a bill with 51 votes -- rather than 60 -- has been highly controversial as Republicans and others have complained that a bill as significant as health care reform should not be passed on a partisan basis.
Obama comforts House liberals: Don't worry, this bill is just the beginning of what we'll do with health care
Allahpundit - Hot Air
Don't look surprised. The left has been remarkably candid about this over the past year or two. Again and again and again and again and again and again and again they've warned people that the dream is bigger than universal coverage or even the public option. Memo from The One to progressives: Keep the dream alive.
Activists, lobbyists pressing campaigns on health care bill
Kim Geiger and Tom Hamburger - The Baltimore Sun
As President Barack Obama began pushing for a prompt vote on his health initiative, lobbyists and activist groups launched advertising and grass-roots campaigns to press the two dozen members of Congress who ultimately could cast the swing votes on the controversial issue. At the headquarters of Americans for Tax Reform, 200 conservative activists received briefings on the message that will be hammered home in the districts of key House Democrats: "This is not about a fight inside Washington," said Grover Norquist, who chaired the meeting. "This is a fight between those ruling Washington and the rest of the country.
Reconciliation -- Playing parliamentary games with America's future
Mike Reagan - The Daily Tribune News
Well, the not-so-surprising news of the week out of Washington is that President Obama is now calling on Congress to schedule a straight vote on the Democrats' health care reform measure. The new twist is that Democrats now recognize that their flawed plan, which has been met with stiff resistance from congressional Republicans and the American people, can only be passed on a pure party-line vote. So after a one-day, photo-op summit, President Obama has decided the time for negotiation has passed.
Blue Dog Chairwoman would vote against Senate bill
Eric Zimmermann - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room
The co-chairwoman of the Blue Dog Caucus said today she will oppose the Senate version of healthcare reform if it comes up for a vote in the House. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.), who also voted against the original House bill, tolld reporters in a conference call that she oppposes the upper chamber's legislation, and she would not support any changes that come from the Senate via reconciliation.
| Latest Polling |
|
Gallup March 5, 2010 Only 37% have faith in the Democrats to fix health care. |