Senator Kent Conrad today made an unusual request of the Congressional Budget Office: a 20-year cost estimate on the latest draft of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’ bill reforming the nation’s health care system. “We’ve got to have somebody look at this objectively and try to tell us: do we bend the cost curve the …
Congress
The Afghanistan Paradox
This war has come to be inexorably linked to this President. He likes to say that he’s “taking the fight” to the terrorists because it’s “fundamental to the defense of our people.” His strong supporters include Karl Rove, John McCain and Sarah Palin. In Congress, Democratic leaders grate at the idea of granting him more …
Protests
From TIME’s Sophia Yan:
Ripples of protesters, thousands of them of all ages, lined Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the Capitol Saturday. Deafening chants could be heard, from “You lie, you lie!” echoing South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s Wednesday speech to plaintive
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Is Obama Only Reaching Out to Dems?
Here’s a story from me about the latest in the Senate on health care reform. I was surprised to hear that the White House hasn’t been wooing any other moderate Republicans aside from Maine’s Olympia Snowe:
During the summer of discontent the White House stopped reaching out to some key potential votes: the other senator from Maine,
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Obama’s Health Care Speech: The Day After
The initial polling from last night’s speech is good, but looking forward, Obama must work on two levels to get this bill to the finish line. Here’s my story for TIME.com on what they were trying to accomplish last night, and how things look today.
The Obama Health Care Speech
It attempted to be not a description of the ideal, but rather one of the doable. As one senior White House official put it a few hours before the speech: “There is a path to get this done. … The issues that separate us are not insuperable.”
Teddy’s Letter
After the jump, the text of Teddy Kennedy’s letter that President Obama cited in the speech. Also, Obama will host a group of bipartisan Senate centrists tomorrow — including, Michael Scherer reports from the Hill, Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson — at the White House to talk about health care.
GOP Response
After the jump is the text of Rep. Charles Boustany’s GOP response to the President’s speech. Republican leaders said they didn’t want a big name to deliver this rebuttal – thus the relatively unknown Boustany, who hails from Louisiana and happens to be a heart surgeon. Also, wonder what some GOP members were waving during the …
Obama’s Remarks
Read along after the jump. Members named: John Dingell, John McCain, Ted Kennedy, Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley.
John Dingell Sr.: A Legacy
As Michael notes, the President’s speech begins with a tribute to John Dingell Sr., a New Deal Congressman who was fighting for universal coverage 65 years ago, and whose son carries on the fight. Here’s a story I wrote on the father and the son, all the way back in the pre-internet-link days of 1993:
Dodd Stays at Banking*
Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd has decided to stay at the helm of the Banking Committee. Dodd was the next-most-senior senator on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee after Ted Kennedy – whose desk remains shrouded in black on the Senate floor and adourned with flowers as colleagues mourn his passing. Dodd could’ve …
Pelosi’s Box
Forget the Senate, here’s a story from me about what’s going on in the House on health care. House leaders have pulled back from their once-aggressive schedule. “I have no timetable” for passage of a bill, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters yesterday. While eschewing the idea that they would wait for the Senate to …
Health Care: The Public Option Fallback
Maine Senator Olympia Snowe’s idea of creating a public option as only a fallback if private insurance companies fail to produce genuine competition seems to be gaining currency at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue at the moment. Today’s Washington Post has new details on how a “trigger” would work: