W.H. warns Dems: Don't flip-flop (Obamacare)

Two senior administration officials said the White House is telling Democrats reconsidering their support for health care reform that they will pay the price for their original vote no matter what happens, so they should reap the political benefits of actually passing a law.

There are 59 senators and 216 House members who put themselves on the record in support of the Democratic plan for health care reform. And the way the White House and Democratic leaders see it, they have little choice but to vote for it again: Think John Kerry, and his immortal words about an Iraq war appropriations bill – that he was for it before he was against it.

“Flip-flopping is dangerous in this business,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide familiar with the strategy.

Speaking in the East Room of the White House to a room full of doctors and nurses, many in hospital scrubs and white coats, President Barack Obama did not touch on such political realities. Instead, he signaled the kind of personal involvement in pushing the legislation over the next few weeks that has been absent – at least publicly - since the upset victory of Sen. Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election in January ended the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority and put health care in doubt.

Kicking off what he promised would be an aggressive campaign, Obama called on Congress to schedule a vote, saying the time for talking is done. And without saying the word "reconciliation," Obama made it clear that he¹ll pass legislation with only Democratic votes if necessary.

The president laid down a timetable that would wrap up the bill before the Easter break in Congress as well as a Democratic line of attack: We’re not passing health care in a backroom deal because it has already passed in both the House and the Senate under the traditional rules. All that’s left now is the cleanup.

“The American people want to know if it’s still possible for Washington to look out for their interests and their future,” Obama said. “I don¹t know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right. And so I ask Congress to finish its work, and I look forward to signing this reform into law.”

Congressional leaders continued Wednesday to lock down a strategy on the process, timing and substance of the bill, aides said. The next major step will be to send the reconciliation bill to the Congressional Budget Office for a cost estimate, which could take days or even weeks to finalize.

House leaders, meanwhile, started the process of smoothing opposition to a finished package. Speaker Nancy Pelosi met Wednesday with New York Democrats in her office off the House floor to assuage concerns about the Medicaid expansion

Since New York already subsidizes more people under Medicaid than most states, it is slated to get less federal aid than states that will be forced under the bill to expand their Medicaid rolls to people with incomes 133 percent above the poverty line - a standard New York already meets.

And quietly, behind the scenes, White House officials and leaders began the critical task of shoring up support.

The House will be asked to cast two more votes – the first on the Senate bill, which contains many elements that liberal members detest, and the second on a package of fixes. The Senate will only have to vote on the second bill through reconciliation, which allows passage with a simple majority rather than 60 votes.

As Democratic leaders urge lawmakers not to reverse their initial vote for the bill, they need to make the opposite case to the 39 House members who opposed reform on the first go around. Neera Tanden, a former health policy aide in the Obama administration, laid out the pitch in a colunm posted Wednesday on The New Republic website.

"As a matter of policy, the Senate bill is a moderate Democrat's dream," Tanden wrote. "House moderates have to ask themselves, apart from political considerations, how can they now vote against a bill that senators Lincoln, Lieberman, Landrieu and Bayh have all voted for?"

Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas said she doesn’t buy the argument on flip-flopping.

She is perhaps the Senate’s most endangered Democrat, facing a primary challenge from the left and, if she survives that, a general election fight from the right. She drew a distinction between her vote in favor of the Senate bill and her opposition to the reconciliation measure.

“I wouldn¹t be voting against the Senate health care bill,” Lincoln said.

“The Senate bill will be what the House passes. Ive been supportive of the Senate bill.” The reconciliation measure “would be a whole other bill,” she said.

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, who has remained undecided on the reconciliation measure, said the argument doesn¹t hold merit because lawmakers aren¹t voting on the same bill. But, she added, lawmakers need to stop looking at the issue through such a political lens and at how their actions will play “politically.”

“You know, there is a substance here that is really important,” she said.

“I’m just so sick of this place and it all being about power and elections and not about people out there. We really need to get beyond the ‘politically’ part.”

Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said he expected the White House to argue to Democrats that they can¹t turn against their vote now.

“It sells itself,” Rockefeller said. “That is an argument I am comfortable with because it needs to be made.”

Distrust of the Senate is a problem for some House members and could make it hard for any Democrat to vote for the Senate bill unless he or she has absolute confidence that Majority Leader Harry Reid and the president will apply their changes through the reconciliation process.

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 290 times, shame on me,” said New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, an always quotable backer of the most sweeping reforms

“Most things the Senate said they would do, they haven¹t done. There are too many deficiencies in the Senate bill for us to go on faith.”

Democrats, no matter how they vote, are expected to come under Republican attack.

House Republicans announced their own latest effort to pressure potential swing votes: “Project Code Red,” which will highlight everything the Democrats say on the issue of health care and make sure GOP candidates running against them back home respond.

And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) predicted “every election in America this fall will be a referendum on this issue.”

The political dynamics put lawmakers like New York Rep. Michael Arcuri, who voted for the initial House bill, in a bind. He expressed frustration with the Senate measure and gave every indication that he’s prepared to vote against the final package; his only caveat was that he hadn’t seen the finished language.

“What I have seen so far, I don’t like the bill,” Arcuri said. “The House bill really accomplished something. It was a tough vote, but I thought it was the right thing to do. I don’t see how the Senate bill will do the kind of things I want to do with health care. It¹s not what I¹m going to support at this point.”

Arcuri complained that the Senate bill lacks a public option, fails to dissolve an antitrust exemption for health insurance companies and won’t allow the federal government to negotiate drug prices under Medicare. He also opposes the tax on high-end health care plans.

His distaste for the Senate bill is hardly unique, but many of his House colleagues signaled a willingness to back an imperfect product over no product at all - a calculation the White House is counting on, in part, because flipping now would be politically perilous.

In the weeks ahead, undecided Democrats will be asked to weigh their objections to parts of the final package against a historic opportunity to provide health insurance to as many as 30 million Americans who currently lack it.

Connecticut Rep. Joe Courtney, an outspoken opponent of the Senate¹s tax on high-end health care plans, doesn¹t like seeing the so-called Cadillac tax in a finished bill. But he¹s not sure that this alone is reason to vote against a final product.

“Obviously, this is a generational moment,” Courtney said. “It¹s a long time ago before the forces built up again. So this is nothing to be trifled with in terms of that opportunity.”

First-term Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly acknowledged that the bill he will have to vote on represents what he called “³the last best chance, and I’m very aware of that, very, very aware of that. So I certainly feel that burden.”

“Could I have a different vote on this bill than I had on the previous one? Absolutely,” said Connolly, who voted for the initial House bill.

“It’s a different bill. Am I likely to be a changed vote? Well, we’ll have to see. I believe we need health care reform. I am passionately committed to that. I think it¹s a terrible missed opportunity to let this slip through our fingers.”

White House announces televised health meet

Politico.com
By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN & MIKE ALLEN

President Barack Obama is planning to host a televised meeting with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders on health care reform.

The Feb. 25 meeting is an attempt to reach across the aisle but not a signal that the president plans to start over, as Republicans have demanded, a White House official said.

“I want to come back [after the Presidents Day congressional recess] and have a large meeting — Republicans and Democrats — to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” Obama said in an interview with Katie Couric during CBS’s Super Bowl pre-game show Sunday.

Obama said he wants to “look at the Republican ideas that are out there.”

“If we can go, step by step, through a series of these issues and arrive at some agreements, then, procedurally, there’s no reason why we can’t do it a lot faster the process took last year,” he said.

In a statement, the official said, “What the president will not do is let this moment slip away. He hopes to have Republican support in doing so — but he is going to move forward on health reform.”

Obama first suggested reopening talks with Republicans during his State of the Union address last month, and reiterated the call at a Democratic fundraiser Thursday, but the White House had kept details of his plan under wraps until Sunday.

The idea has been met previously with skepticism by the congressional leaders of both parties. Republicans say they see little room for compromise because the bill should be scrapped, while Democrats argue they have already tried a bipartisan approach, but failed.

But since the Democratic loss in the Massachusetts Senate race, Obama has been forced to rework his legislative strategy – both by striking a more bipartisan tone, and returning to his campaign pledge of providing more transparency. He’s been dogged by questions about why he failed to live up to his campaign promise of televising the health care negotiations on C-SPAN.

The half-day meeting will take place at Blair House, and be broadcast live, presumably by C-SPAN, making it the first televised White House meeting involving the president since a forum last March.

There were 11 other roundtable discussions, usually led by White House health care reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle, that were webstreamed and, in some cases, carried live by C-Span.

“While he’s been very clear that he supports the House and Senate bills, if Republicans or anyone else has a plan for protecting Americans from insurance company abuses, lowering costs, reducing prescription drug prices for seniors, making coverage more secure, and offering affordable options to those without coverage, he’s anxious to see it and debate the merits of it,” the White House official said.

Legislators from both parties applauded the meeting, while holding to their positions on the health care legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a statement reacting to Obama's call for what Reid called "a bipartisan, bicameral health insurance reform meeting":

“Senate Democrats join with the president in reaffirming our commitment to seeking a bipartisan solution to health reform. We have promoted the pursuit of a bipartisan approach to health reform from day one. As we continue our work to fix our broken health care system, Senate Democrats will not relent on our commitment to protecting consumers from insurance company abuses, reducing health care costs, saving Medicare and cutting the deficit.”

"Obviously, I am pleased that the White House finally seems interested in a real, bipartisan conversation on health care,” said House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Oh.) in a statement Sunday. He added: “The problem with the Democrats' health care bills is not that the American people don't understand them; the American people do understand them, and they don't like them.”

The announcement of the televised meeting comes as Democrats have expressed growing confusion about how the White House plans to deliver a health care reform bill this year, after two weeks of inconsistent statements and little hands-on involvement by Obama.

Democrats on Capitol Hill and beyond said last week they had no clear understanding of the White House strategy and were growing impatient with Obama’s reluctance to lead the way toward a legislative solution.

The bipartisan talks are the latest iteration of Obama's plan to restart health care, which has been stalled in the more than two weeks since Democrats lost the Massachusetts Senate race. In that time, Obama or his top advisers have talked of breaking the bill into smaller parts, keeping it together in one comprehensive package, putting it at the back of legislative line and needing to “punch it through” Congress.

Obama told Couric that he did not regret holding back on health reform to pursue a jobs agenda.

“Keep in mind: Jobs were my number-one priority last year,” he said. “Do I wish we could have done it faster, that it hadn’t been so painful slow through the legislative process? Absolutely. But it was the right thing to do then. It continues to be the right thing.”

As for meeting with Republicans, Obama on Thursday described the “next step” as sitting down with the GOP, Democrats and health care experts. “Let's just go through these bills — their ideas, our ideas — let's walk through them in a methodical way so that the American people can see and compare what makes the most sense,” Obama said.

At the same fundraiser, Obama seemed to acknowledge for the first time that Congress may well decide to scrap health care altogether — an admission that blunted his repeated and emphatic vows to finish the job. The White House said Obama’s remarks were misinterpreted and he intends to finish health reform.

Speaking to Couric, Obama acknowledged public unhappiness with all the special deals in the legislation. “What we have to do is just make sure that it is a much more clear and transparent process,” he said. “I’ve got to push Congress on that.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger: 'Bribes' infect health reform

By MIKE ALLEN | 1/6/10 2:42 PM EST

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger savaged congressional plans for health reform in his 2010 State of the State address on Wednesday, calling the legislation "health care to nowhere" that's infected with "bribes, deals and loopholes."

With the nation's largest state enduring a fiscal crisis, Schwarzenegger said California's lawmakers should vote against the bill or push to get the Medicaid subsidies that were written into the Senate bill in order to secure Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) as the 60th and passing vote for that chamber's version of reform. The deal has been attacked as the "Cornhusker Kickback."

"While I enthusiastically support health care reform, it is not reform to push more costs onto states that are already struggling while other states get sweetheart deals," Schwarzenegger said before a joint session of the California State Legislature.

"Health care reform, which started as noble and needed legislation, has become a trough of bribes, deals and loopholes. You've heard of the bridge to nowhere. This is health care to nowhere. California's congressional delegation should either vote against this bill that is a disaster for California or get in there and fight for the same sweetheart deal Senator Nelson of Nebraska got for the Cornhusker State. He got the corn; we got the husk."

Obama takes aim at health plan foes

By POLITICO STAFF | 12/19/09 12:12 AM EST

President Barack Obama used his weekly address Sunday to get in a dig at liberal critics of health reform like former Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean – but also faulted Republicans for trying to stall a vote on the bill until after Christmas.

Obama took aim at critics who say the bill doesn’t go far enough to rein in insurance company excesses – a leading charge of liberals like Dean, who earlier this week called on the Senate to scrap the current bill and start over.

The bills in the House and Senate, Obama says, “would represent the toughest measures we’ve ever taken to hold the insurance industry accountable. Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn’t read the bills.”

“Both the House and Senate bills would make it against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage on the basis of a pre-existing condition or illness. Both would stop insurers from charging exorbitant premiums on the basis of age, health, or gender. Both would prevent insurance companies from dropping your coverage when you get sick. And both would put a limit on how much you have to pay out of pocket for the treatments you need in a year or lifetime,” Obama said, noting that these fixes were all included in the nearly decade-old Patients’ Bill of Rights that was never signed into law.

Liberals, including Dean and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, emerged this week as vocal critics of the Senate bill, saying it’s been so watered down to reach a compromise with moderates that it’s lost critical fixes to the insurance system, like the creation of a government-run health insurance option to compete with private insurers.

Dean wrote in a Washington Post op-ed Thursday that the measure “expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations. . . . I know health reform when I see it, and there isn't much left in the Senate bill.”

Obama also took on Republicans who have said they hope to stop a vote on the bill before Christmas. Republican leaders say Democrats are trying to ram through a bill that lacks public support without giving senators a chance to review it.

Referring to Republican threats to try to delay a vote, Obama says, “Whatever their position on health insurance reform, senators ought to allow an up or down vote. Let’s bring this long and vigorous debate to an end. Let’s deliver on the promise of health insurance reforms that will make our people healthier, our economy stronger, and our future more secure.”

President Obama's troops break ranks on health care

By KENNETH P. VOGEL | 12/17/09 8:42 PM EST

The foot soldiers of Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, organized to go into action when key elements of his agenda are at stake, aren't universally enthusiastic about fighting for the health care compromise now before the Senate. Photo: AP

The foot soldiers of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, organized to go into action when key elements of his agenda are at stake, aren’t universally enthusiastic about fighting for the health care compromise now before the Senate.

On Wednesday morning, Organizing for America, as Obama’s reconstituted campaign organization is now known, e-mailed its list of 13 million Obama supporters asking them to “call your senators now and help us ‘ring in reform.’”

The campaign yielded 150,000 calls — less than half the number of a similar effort in October — and it prompted a backlash among online and local activists who had logged countless volunteer supporting Obama’s campaign and legislative agenda, but who felt betrayed by recent Democratic concessions in the health-care reform fight.

To be sure, the October effort targeted members of the House and Senate, while Wednesday’s calls only targeted senators. Keeping any political organization together after the enthusiasm of a campaign is difficult, and it’s hard to gauge how widespread the unhappiness is.

But there’s plenty of unhappiness. One leading OFA volunteer in Florida blasted an e-mail to a statewide listserv urging activists to “just say no” to the phone-banking effort — uncorking a torrent of frustration from Florida Democrats — while some OFA subscribers replied directly to the call-to-action e-mail with angry messages and others asked to be removed from the list entirely.

Still others said they would indeed call their senators — but would urge them to oppose the bill. And the liberal blogosphere registered its dissatisfaction with the call to action, with one prominent blogger on MyDD predicting that “Organizing for America will get a rude awakening when they try to round up canvassers and phone bankers.”

After the October plea, which yielded 315,000 calls, a White House-allied outside group blasted out a Huffington Post report indicating that an overwhelming majority of calls specifically supported the so-called public option then being pushed aggressively by congressional liberals.

Since then, the public option has been all but dropped from consideration, and this week a proposed Medicare expansion that replaced it was removed to placate Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).

The Democratic National Committee, which houses the OFA, pointed out there had been a total of 1 million calls since the health-care phone-call campaign launched in August and professed to be happy with the number of calls Wednesday, but also conceded that not all subscribers were on board.

“Of our hundreds of thousands of volunteers, there are certainly some who at any given time may disagree with a tactic here or a policy there,” said DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan. “However, as we've seen throughout this process, the vast majority of our supporters remain engaged because they recognize that after a century of fighting for reform, that we are closer than ever and that this is the best chance we may ever have to ensure affordable, reliable health care is available to every American.”

The plan as currently construed won’t achieve those goals, said Nancy Jacobson, an Orlando Democrat who has volunteered for OFA.

“I will call my senators, but I will be asking them to vote against the bill without the public option or Medicare buy-in,” she said.

Dave Hearn, a Fort Dodge, Iowa, optician who helped organize Obama’s campaign in Webster County and has volunteered for OFA by sending e-mails and organizing a local health care “vigil,” said Obama “is taking for granted that the volunteers who worked so hard for him were going to buy in to whatever strategy he chose to pass his major legislative initiative.”

Though he said he’s “still a great believer in Obama,” he said he didn’t participate in the OFA phone banking and won’t be volunteering for future health-care-related efforts. “What am I going to say: ‘I hate this bill, but we’re Obama people, so let’s do it?’” he said.

Amy Slattery, an OFA volunteer who organized a health-care phone bank in New York last month to lean on Lieberman, said she plans to remain engaged in the group’s reform advocacy, despite being “frustrated with aspects of the bill (and certainly with Lieberman).”

She explained, “I certainly understand the unease that a lot of people have been feeling, but I remain hopeful that the process will achieve some type of positive health care reform.”

But Tanya Keith, a small business owner from Des Moines who was a precinct captain for Obama’s Iowa campaign, replied to the OFA e-mail, writing “Why should I devote my valuable time to volunteer for a bill that has no teeth left in it? We've sold our souls to 4 Senators instead of sitting down and convincing them that a public option or at the very LEAST medicare is included in the bill.”

Joe Trippi, a Democratic operative who ran former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s unsuccessful bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, said OFA didn’t effectively “do the groundwork to get their on-ground supporters to buy in” to the reform plan before asking them to advocate for it.

“If you don’t do that pre-work,” said Trippi, who left Dean’s operation before it transitioned into a group called Democracy for America that is similar to OFA, “there’s a real danger in causing people to disengage and getting them to hit that ‘unsubscribe’ button and saying ‘don’t bother me any more.’”

That’s what Susan Smith, an OFA activist from Tampa, did. She also fired off an e-mail urging members of the Florida Progressives listserv to “say NO if (OFA staffers) ask you to participate” in the phone banking.

“If this bill passes, it will be because Joe Lieberman threw a hissy fit and was allowed to control what went into the bill,” she wrote. “That means that in the end, he had more power with President Obama and Senator Reid than we do. If he is rewarded, this tactic will be used over and over again to kill the progressive agenda.” She also urged members not to donate to the DNC or the Party’s congressional campaign committees.

In an interview, Smith said her listserv message prompted an outpouring of similar sentiments.

“People are frustrated because we have done our part,” she said. “We put these people in the position to make change and they’re not doing it.”

That kind of disappointment has already diminished the power of OFA, asserted Adam Green, a former official with the liberal online juggernaut MoveOn.org, who now helps run the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which supports the public option.

In September, the group collected signatures from more than 100,000 former Obama campaign staffers, volunteers and donors on a letter urging him to support the public option.

“We heard story after story from current Organizing for America volunteers about how they were getting disillusioned with Obama because he wasn’t fighting for the public option,” Green said. “Obama’s e-mail list may soon become a hollow shell if he does not fight Joe Lieberman and insist that there be a public option.”