Health Care -- Hoping Obama Fails

July 24, 2009

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Nate Carlile, and Ian Millhiser

HEALTH CARE

Hoping Obama Fails

Days before President Obama took office, hate radio talker Rush Limbaugh, the de-facto leader of the Republican Party, summed up his desired outcome for the Obama presidency in four words: "I hope Obama fails." Just days after he uttered that statement, Limbaugh told his audience, "There's one thing we gotta stop is health care. I'm serious, now. If they get that, then that's the tipping point." Nearly eight month's later, the right wing's approach to health care reform remains guided by Limbaugh's vision -- they simply hope it fails. And so the conservative movement is increasingly banking on a political strategy of opposing health care in the hopes that it will help resurrect the political fortunes of the struggling Republican Party. During a recent appearance on right-wing radio show, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) bluntly stated that defeating Obama's health care agenda is "going to be a huge gain for those of us who want to turn this thing over in the 2010 election." In a separate radio appearance, Inhofe -- speaking for the right wing -- explained, "We are plotting the demise on a week by week basis of where Bill Clinton was in 1993 and where Obama is today and his demise ratio is greater than Clinton's was in 1993."

BATTLE OF WATERLOO: Speaking on a conference call with "tea party" activists, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) let slip why he hopes that health reform fails: "If we're able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) half-admitted the truth about conservative opposition to health reform, telling CNBC that the balance between opponents' desire to express disagreement with the President and their desire to exploit a failed bill for political gain is "probably 50-50." Yet even as conservatives plot to leave tens of millions of Americans without health care in order to score political points on Obama, they refuse to release a single new idea to address the health care crisis. Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), head of the "House GOP Health Care Solutions Group," at first announced that his group would not be releasing a health care plan because they believe doing so would be a waste of time, only to have Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) follow up that statement by saying that Republicans will have an alternative healthcare reform bill to offer, "but [he] did not say when it would be ready." For his part, DeMint introduced a bill which appears to be plagiarized from the McCain-Palin health plan that voters soundly rejected last November.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: DeMint is not the only conservative recycling old playbooks in the hopes of breaking Obama. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), who knows something about exploiting a failed health care bill for electoral gain, endorsed DeMint's "Waterloo" statement, proclaiming that "this could be the bill that drags [Obama's] whole presidency down." During the Clinton-era health care debate in the '90s, right-wing strategist Bill Kristol urged conservative lawmakers "to defeat any Democratic health reform bill" as a political strategy to "send them to voters empty-handed" in 1994. Sixteen years later, Kristol is offering the same advice, urging conservatives to "[r]esist the temptation" to compromise and "[g]o for the kill." Much of the right's substantive rhetoric is also plagiarized from past efforts to kill health care reform. Nearly fifty years ago, when members of Congress first proposed the bill that became Medicare,opponents of reform distributed a recording called "Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine." Similarly, conservatives created a disingenuously complex chart of the Clinton health plan to defeat reform fifteen years ago. Unsurprisingly, conservatives are now waving a similarly fabricated chart in an effort to discredit Obama's plan.

SILENCING DISSENT: Despite the right's tightly-controlled strategy to place political gain ahead of the American people's health, some cracks are starting to form in their coalition. Most importantly, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) distanced himself from Kristol's advice to "go for the kill," worrying that "there have been some Republicans who haven't been looking at the polls." Specifically, Grassley referred to a poll showing that if health reform fails, "voters would assign blame 30 percent to the health industry, 22 to Republicans, 11 percent to Democrats and only 4 percent to Obama." Despite his insight, however, Grassley is "under immense pressure from Republican colleagues not to deal at all," and he has agreed to brief his entire caucus before agreeing to compromise with supporters of health care reform. In addition, Grassley apparently informed Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) that he "cannot sign on to a bill if it is supported by only one other Republican." In other words, the nation's health and the health of the economy will rest, not on the needs of the American people, but on whether conservatives instead decide that they care more about their own selfish desire to see Obama fail.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS -- SURVEY FINDS U.S. IMAGE ABROAD 'IMPROVED MARKEDLY' WITH PRESIDENT OBAMA'S ELECTION: A new Pew Global Attitudes Project survey, conducted May 18 to June 16, found that "the image of the United States has improved markedly in most parts of the world, reflecting global confidence in Barack Obama." The poll even found that in Germany, Obama enjoys greater confidence than Chancellor Angela Merkel and French citizens are more confident in Obama than they are in President Nicolas Sarkozy. The Pew report found that the United States' image has not only improved dramatically in Western Europe, but "opinions of America have also become more positive in key countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, as well." Even countries with a Muslim majority, Indonesia in particular, where the United States was incredibly unpopular during the Bush Administration, have seen an increase in favorable American sentiment since Obama was elected. "However for the most part, opinions of the U.S. among Muslims in the Middle East remain largely unfavorable, despite some positive movement in the numbers in Jordan and Egypt. Animosity toward the U.S., however, continues to run deep and unabated in Turkey, the Palestinian territories and Pakistan." At the same time, Pew's survey also "confirms a drop in confidence in the United States among Israelis." Immediately after Obama's Cairo speech, Israeli confidence in him to do the right thing slipped from 60 percent before the speech to 49 percent. On policies, Obama's personal popularity doesn't always translate. For example, Obama's plan to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan "is the only Obama policy tested that does not engender broad global support. In fact, majorities in most countries oppose the added deployments."

A day after Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) suggested that House Republicans won't offer a health care plan of their own, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said that Republicans will have an alternative healthcare reform bill to offer "but did not say when it would be ready." "We're continuing to put the final touches on our bill as the Democrats are continuing to put the finishing touches on their bill," he said.

Leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus sent a letter on Thursday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and President Obama calling out seven "Blue Dog" Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee who are "holding up health care for people who are sick and dying." The letter restated the CBC's commitment to "a robust government insurance health plan."

At a town hall meeting in Ohio yesterday, President Obama said "he is willing to accept a temporary delay in the passage of health care reform legislation if Congress ultimately approves a satisfactory bill." If legislators "are legitimately working out tough problems," Obama said he had "no problem," adding that he didn't "want a delay just because of politics... (or) delay for the sake of delay."

After likening the behavior of North Korea's regime to "unruly teenagers," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found herself on the receiving end of a personal attack. A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman called Clinton "by no means intelligent" and a "funny lady." "Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping," the statement said.

Yesterday, President Obama stood by his comments that the Cambridge, MA police department acted "stupidly" in its arrest of Harvard African-American studies professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. "I have to say I am surprised by the controversy surrounding my statement, because I think it was a pretty straightforward commentary that you probably don't need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged man who uses a cane, who's in his own home," Obama said.

The federal minimum wage rises today from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour, which affects nearly 4 million workers across the nation and is the final wage increase mandated by Congress in 2007. The increase means that a full-time minimum wage earner will receive $28 more a week. "[A]ny kind of increase in your paycheck is a big help," said one minimum wage earner, "[it] makes you feel that much better about paying your bills."

Obama will announce the next phase of education funding today "as one round of stimulus money filters through state governments and into school districts." The $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund will be distributed in two stages to "a handful of states with positive records" of what the Education Department "considers school reform as well as plans for additional improvement."

And finally: Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) caused great political controversy when he bluntly stated, "If we're able to stop Obama on [health care] it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." Last night, in front of a lively crowd of hometown supporters, Obama responded with a sharp quip. "Let me tell you something," the president said. "I'm from Chicago. I don't break."

Paul Krugman on DeMinted Republicans.

Without a hint of snark, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch writes in praise of Michelle Malkin, David Horowitz, and Michael Medved.

Jon Stewart is the most trusted name in news.

Ralph Peters: A history of violence.

Simon Johnson explains why billions more are going to the auto industry.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) wants to kill health care reform for political gain.

The Democrats' problem in passing health care might be trying to work with Republicans.

Michael Steele urges Democrats to pass health care reform bill without Republicans.

I think that's a brilliant straw man you made up. I can't remember anyone saying [the market is failing because of President Obama]."
-- The Washington Examiner's J.P. Freire, 7/23/09

VERSUS

"Yesterday the Dow fell another 4.24% to 6763, for an overall decline of 25% in two months and to its lowest level since 1997. The dismaying message here is that President Obama's policies have become part of the economy's problem."
-- The Wall Street Journal, 3/09/09

Think Progress

Hoping Obama Fails

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