TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2009, 11:30 PM EDT:
According to a late breaking report from Politico, President Barack Obama has abandoned his goal to reform health care through a government overhaul of the industry through his proposed public option plan, a program that would establish a federal government alternative to private insurance.
This announcement reflects HCHR’s own Warner Todd Huston’s earlier assessment that indicated President Obama would offer his own roadmap for health care reform in the next few days. Politico confirmed this finding by explaining that the President would give a speech to the American public within the week.
The White House has often refused to take a stand on their preference for health care reform legislation, citing the failed attempts of the Clinton Administration to pass similar proposals crafted behind closed doors in the mid-1990s. The public vehemently opposed this approach, resenting the secrecy and partisan nature surrounding its creation.
President Obama endured plummeting poll numbers each time he became a vocal proponent of the public option. To make matters worse, general public opinion data proves health care reform efforts from the Democrats in Congress have elevated their GOP adversaries and catalyzed a widespread distrust of their party.
According to Rasmussen Reports:
- 43 percent of Americans would rather vote for a Republican candidate than a Democrat (36 percent) in the next election.
- President Obama’s daily tracking numbers are spiraling downward, with only 30 percent of voters “strongly approving” of his job performance and 41 percent strongly disapproving, a Presidential Approal Rating of -11.
- The American people still oppose liberal health care reform, with 53 percent against the Democrats’ proposals and only 43 percent supporting them.
With the public option no longer the primary goal for the White House, President Obama and liberals in Congress must answer to America’s progressives who empowered the far-Left Illinois center to become the Democratic Party nominee, and ultimately, the president. To these leftists, a public option was already too watered down from their goal of a single-payer, universal health care system and a co-operatives program, supported by a few Blue Dog Democrats and some moderate Republicans, is unacceptable to them.
Rasmussen Reports illustrates this point in a recent survey of registered Democrat voters, the majority of whom rejected the idea of health care reform without a government overhaul offered by a public option. Rasmussen discovered that 57 percent of Democrats oppose any legislation that does not include provisions for a public option system.
Now, President Obama, criticized for a lackadaisical role in the legislative process, must formulate his own methods of achieving success with his administration’s hallmark platform issue, a daunting task for his colleagues, as they have spent several months trying to persuade American voters to stand behind him on the public option. If another measure were introduced, it could take months for it to make its way through all the committees and onto the floor of Congress, even if the Democratic majority were to employ the budget reconciliation procedure.
“I’m not going to put a date on any of this,” Axelrod said. “But I think it’s fairly obvious that we’re not in the second inning. We’re not in the fourth inning. We’re in the eighth or ninth inning here, and so there’s not a lot of time to waste.”
Additionally, a co-operatives bill would not satisfy the requirements of the liberal Congressional leadership and would face strong opposition from conservatives who already stirred up enough public anxiety to defeat the public option. Co-operatives would strictly rely upon the aforementioned Blue Dog Democrats and the moderate Republicans to pass, but these groups simply do not have the numbers to usher the bill all the way to President Obama’s desk.
However, public option provisions still exist in all four Congressional health care bills. Some Democrats, indignant over the President’s sudden forsaking of liberal autonomy, pledge to continue to fight for the public option, with or without his help.
Is this the end of President Obama’s dream to pass sweeping health care reform legislation by the close of the 111th Congress? If so, Sen. Jim DeMint could be right. It just might be his Waterloo.
Tags: Blue Dog Coalition, co-operatives, Congress, Ellen Carmichael, liberal, Politico, progressive, public-option, Rasmussen
