White House statement luke-warm on Reid public option announcement
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has just issued the following statement -
The President congratulates Senator Reid and Chairmen Baucus and Dodd for their hard work on health insurance reform. Thanks to their efforts, we’re closer than we’ve ever been to solving this decades-old problem. And while much work remains, the President is pleased that at the progress that Congress has made. He’s also pleased that the Senate has decided to include a public option for health coverage, in this case with an allowance for states to opt out. As he said to Congress and the nation in September, he supports the public option because it has the potential to play an essential role in holding insurance companies accountable through choice and competition.
Clearly, the White House is not there yet on the ‘opt-out’ approach. Rightly or wrongly, the public option has been at the very heart of the health care reform debate and President Obama has never been shy about personally stepping in front of the microphone to make a statement of support – when he actually supports something. By having the press office do this, Obama is communicating that he is not ready to put his muscle behind Reid’s decision. Nor is he ready to put the screws to those Democratic senators Reid needs to step up on the procedural vote to block a GOP filibuster.
The White House cat and mouse game is beginning to get a bit old. It’s like the President is waiting until the last possible moment to ask a date to the prom just in case somebody better might end up being available. We all know how that tends to work out – you end up at the dance with your second cousin.
While it can be said that these decisions are being made and games are being played in the name of clever politics, it’s enough already. There comes a point where a president has actually got to lead.
Both the House and Senate are about to introduce their bills on the floors of their respective chambers. This might be a good time for the President to actually tell us exactly what it is that he wants.
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I am going to spend the day assuming Obama knows what he is doing. I’m going to put away my frustration as a liberal and not think of the many ways democrats tend to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Is it really good news…no I’m going to spend the day with Batman cartoons where the Joker is defeated and the good guy wins.
“This might be a good time for the President to actually tell us exactly what it is that he wants.”
That time has come and gone. The time for him to get out in front of this thing was back when there was a “front”. The way he’s done healthcare, and pretty much everything else, should be enough to tell us what he wants – whatever passes. And he’ll say he was for it, whatever it is.
Public option? He was for it in his Sept. speech. No public option? Well, didn’t he say it wasn’t the only way to get there? Obama stands for nothing other than what gets through the Congress. It’s might show no leadership, and no commitment to anything at all, but hey – it’s safer. What a punk!
“This might be a good time for the President to actually tell us exactly what it is that he wants.”
Nope, not yet, but soon. The prez IMO will bring his influence to bare on members of the House not the Senate when it gets to conference time. For a lot of political reasons the speaker needs to maintain her standing with the left of the party. Both she and the leader have done a bang up job of bringing the blue dogs in line, someone is going to need to be a tempering force on the left (especially in the House), this is where the president will step in. Keep on the look out for an abortion battle that is going to percolate to the surface in the very near future around health care, the speaker needs to steer clear of this, the president doesn’t.
As much as I would like to know where we are going, and would love to see Obama finally come out and say “Public Option or bust” I do kind of see why he might still be keeping it quiet. Notice how just from this summer we’ve gone from Tea Parties and Death Panels to a time where now we know reform is coming, we just do not know exactly what final form it is going to take. I guess it could just be that football season is in effect and the people have calmed down, or it could be that he wisely just chose to weather the storm until we got to this point where finally a grouping of proposals is about to hit the floor and the real fighting is going to happen. Any time he’s opened his mouth before it’s just caused his enemies to try and shout as hard as they could over top of him, so it has probably been for the best he has just let it be fought out in these committees and on the top of Capitol Hill, and then to finally step in once the big brawl hits and everyone wears themselves out. Of course, this might just be hopeful thinking on my part that Obama is finally going to stand up and be that voice for change again that I cast my ballot for eleven months ago.
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