Senate, Obama Back Off Healthcare Reform Deadline
Senate, Obama back off healthcare reform August deadline.
The Wall Street Journal (7/24, Adamy, Weisman) reports that "the Senate's top Democrat on Thursday conceded that the chamber won't pass a health overhaul by August, giving the White House another setback as it presses its ambitious health agenda." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) "said senators will press ahead with a bipartisan bill until they go on break in two weeks, and pick up when they return from the month long recess in September." The CBS Evening News (7/23, story 3, 2:00, Reid) said that Obama "finally conceded that Congress won't meet his demand of passing healthcare reform bills before the August recess." Obama was shown saying, "That's OK. I just want people to keep on working." The President "appeared to take it in stride, a dramatic change from just days ago when he was still insisting on his deadline." The Los Angeles Times (7/24, Parsons) similarly reports that President Obama said that "he can live with a new timeline as long as it doesn't mean that work on Capitol Hill skids to a halt." Obama "said he still wanted to reform healthcare by the end of the year -- a reasonable goal, he said, even though Senate leaders now say they won't vote before their August recess."
Still, Bloomberg News (7/24, Rowley) reports that after about a 90-minute meeting with Senate Democrats, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters, "This isn't about playing 'Beat the Clock.' ... There's an urgency to health reform that deals with each and every American's life."
The USA Today (7/23, Fritze) On Politics blog also quotes Sebelius, reporting that she "sought to downplay the decision to delay the vote until September."
Stories on the President's remarks on healthcare, during a visit to Shaker, OH, tend to cast his criticism of Republicans for stalling his reform plans (an issue he also raised during his Wednesday night press conference) as inaccurate. Instead, media analysts generally agree that it is Obama's fellow Democrats who are slowing Obama's healthcare reform timetable. The AP (7/23, Babington), for example, reports that Obama "took a few swipes at Republican critics. But his biggest obstacles are fellow Democrats who control the House and Senate and are moving slowly on his call for widespread changes to US healthcare." Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor (7/24, Chaddock) quotes Julian Zelizer, "a congressional historian at Princeton University in New Jersey," as saying, "The Republicans are a problem because they are the President's most vocal critics, but he can't get around the fact that this is a Democratic Congress and he has a filibuster-proof Senate -- and he wasn't able to meet his deadline."
The Washington Post (7/24, Murray, et al.), USA Today (7/24, Fritze), the New York Times (7/24, Herszenhorn, Zeleny), the Financial Times (7/24, Dombey, subscription required), and the Washington Times (7/24, Bellantoni) also cover the story.
Obama says he'll "feel pretty good" if Finance Panel finishes bill by August. In an interview with Terry Moran, part of which aired on ABC World News (7/23, story 2, 3:00, Gibson), the President said, "Given the progress that I'm seeing made, as long as everybody is working steadily, as fast as they can, and particularly the Senate Finance Committee, which I think is the committee that a lot of folks are waiting for. If that gets done before the August recess, I feel pretty good."