“I don’t 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.”
“President Obama is about to invite Congress to ram through the health care bill, because it’s what the American people would want if we knew what’s good for us.” —Ann Althouse, 3/3/2010
Time to act on health care, Obama declares
Alan Fram
3/3/2010
Declaring the nation is “waiting for us to act” after a year of debate, President Barack Obama urged Congress Wednesday to enact his signature health care legislation swiftly. He said it now contains the best ideas from both political parties.
“This is where we’ve ended up. It’s an approach that has been debated and changed and I believe improved over the last year,” Obama said in excerpts released in advance of an early afternoon appearance at the White House.
The president was also expected to endorse a plan by Democrats to try and enact the legislation by majority vote – using a Senate procedure that would deny Republicans the right to filibuster…
…[Senate Republican Mitch] McConnell said that a decision by Democrats to invoke rules that bar a filibuster would be “met with outrage” by voters, and he said Obama was pushing a sweeping bill that the public doesn’t want.
“They’ve had enough of this yearlong effort to get a win for the Democratic Party at any price to the American people,” McConnell said on the Senate floor…
…Democrats talked confidently of the outcome.
If Republicans “want to run a campaign of bring back the day of kicking people off because of pre-existing conditions, I relish it,” the Democratic chairman, Tim Kaine, said on the NBC-TV’s “Today” show…
The complete article is here.
