Sunday, February 07, 2010
Obama: Compromise for the people for a change
by Larry Geller
In an interview today with Katie Couric, Barack Obama announced that he will be meeting with Republican and Democratic leadership in a summit conference on the stalled healthcare reform (will he serve beer?).
This is, first and foremost, about defusing the lines of attack that have scared the hell out of Democratic legislators. If you talk to people on the Hill, there's relatively little concern about the substance of the likely compromise, but there's enormous anxiety over the public's belief that the bill is thick with noxious deals, which is fed by the idea that the process has been hidden from the American people. After all, people reason, if the bill was so good, why wouldn't they let C-SPAN into the negotiations? The White House hopes this summit will be a clean break with that narrative. [Washington Post, Obama calls the next play for health-care reform, 2/7/2010]
Ok, good that he’s holding this meeting. But it doesn’t do a darn thing to assuage “the enormous anxiety over the public's belief that the bill is thick with noxious deals.”
Why? Because both House and Senate versions are thick with noxious deals. Fact, not anxiety.
The anxiety might be that when they are done making these bills into rancid sausage, all that will be left of them will be the noxious deals.
I love this part of the snip above:
…If you talk to people on the Hill, there's relatively little concern about the substance of the likely compromise…
I’m not hopeful. Banksters got their bailouts and insurance company execs will get huge profits from these bills. We, the people, got … … … gosh, I can’t think of anything.
And they are not concerned? We are.
Post a Comment
Requiring those Captcha codes at least temporarily, in the hopes that it quells the flood of comment spam I've been receiving.