Obama Suggests Flexibility on Health Care Timing, But Not Much

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Holly Bailey

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Holly Bailey

Is President Obama wavering on that August deadline that he's given Congress on health care reform? As recently as this weekend, Peter Orszag, Obama’s top economic adviser, had repeated Obama’s long-held position that he wanted a bill before Congress went home for their summer recess. But Obama noticeably did not repeat that deadline in remarks he made today on health care reform. In an interview tonight, PBS’s Jim Lehrer asked Obama point blank if he was “backing off” the August deadline. “I want this done now,” Obama replied. “If there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town… If someone comes to me and says, it’s basically done; it’s going to spill over by a few days or a week, you know, that’s different.” Obama insisted he’s still confident he’ll get a bill by the August recess. Lehrer also asked Obama about his sliding poll numbers, particularly on health care reform. George W. Bush often shrugged off poll numbers, suggesting he never even read them. Not Obama, who says he’s focusing on his overall approval rating—59 percent, according to the Washington Post/ABC News poll. “I feel pretty good about the fact that our polls have held up under extraordinarily difficult circumstances,” Obama told Lehrer. “I think we may have set a very high bar for ourselves. Normally at 59 percent, folks would say, ‘We’ll take it.’”

Tag(s): Barack Obama, Healthcare

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Posted By: NewsWkDickG (July 21, 2009 at 4:48 PM)

Some may or may not agree with all of the detail in President Obama's solutions but they are real solutions in contrast to the Republican's purely obstructionist behavior. It likely is very true that the Obama solutions really need to be fine tuned but it is also totally obvious that they are presented with real conscientious concern in contrast to the purely political maneuvering of the Republicans. The Republicans exuberantly present that they have the opportunity to "break the president" with his position on healthcare reform being "his Waterloo" and they strive to stubbornly be unified to accomplish just that, yet shouldn't their obvious total disregard for responsibility and for any honest focus on cooperatively addressing the issues be their downfall? We really could use a conscientious and responsibly focused Republican Party to cooperatively concentrate on getting things right instead of just being belligerently focused on their political self-interests and on returning to 'more of the same'. In 2000 and 2004 we saw how the powerful, influential and wealthy few, who Bush-Cheney totally patronized and loyally focused on, were able to covertly and overtly manipulate public opinion and we can now just look around to see where that got us. 'More of the same' should never be a consideration and hopefully we have learned our lesson to sincerely avoid once again being the gullible and naive voters who were deceptively easily excited and manipulated with subterfuge. 'More of the same' is what benefits them and what the select few want and is what they desire to slip by the majority who it spells disaster for. Heads up people!

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Posted By: teddyo (July 21, 2009 at 10:19 AM)

I want healthcare for all, and let the rich pay for it. They got away with murder under the bush error

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Posted By: Dredd (July 21, 2009 at 9:29 AM)

Obviously the sooner a problem is fixed the better.

The problem is the difficulty in trusting congress to be able to fix anything when their counsellors are lobbyists and Wall Street folk who got us here by helping the plunder barons in the first place.

http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/07/riders-on-storm-of-plunder.html

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