The talk this week has been dominated by what happened in Massachusetts and how it will change the president’s health care agenda. With the election of Republican Scott Brown, Democrats soon will no longer have a filibuster-proof majority – which leaves the White House scrambling to figure out how to package health care.
One thing becoming clear is that time is not on the Democrats side. The health care debate continues to drag, and Congress is still struggling to answer the same question they were being asked in July: When will you get a bill to the president?
Obama yesterday signaled an acknowledgment of how this legislation has hurt his party. “I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on,” he said.
That means concessions from the Democrats. The public option has been long gone, but what else might be stripped from the bill? Giving up the president’s goal of tort reform is something to watch for as a final bill is produced.
The two main pillars Obama continues to hawk are general and bipartisan – cut health costs and end insurance industryy practices that hurt consumers.
Health care has personified the Obama presidency thus far. Both the legislation and his administration had lofty goals to fundamentally change how this country operates. But both have been stymied by the realities of the governmental process.
Still, the midterm elections are a political lifetime away. Where is the GOP willing to work with the administration? Can the president prove government is a solution and not a problem?
To do this, the White House will be anxious to get whatever it can out of health care as quickly as possible. Expediency will be valued as much, if not more, than the product itself. As we move towards the State of the Union, the focus will be jobs and jobs.
An incomprehensible tragedy
As the images of Haiti slowly fade from the media's coverage, I want to share a story I believe illustrates what things are like in that country.
A co-worker of mine lost 11 members of her family in Haiti, and for a time she thought that number was 12.
When the earthquake hit and her home began shaking, her nine-year-old ran to escape the building. When the rumbling stopped, the boy was nowhere to be found.
Three days later the boy was discovered wandering the streets looking for his family.
There are so many stories like this that make it almost impossible to connect. Being so far removed makes it a struggle for me to truly understand what is happening there. The scope of this disaster is catastrophic.
It puts the frequent partisanship we hear in this country into perspective.
