Obama: “This Shit May Not Work Out” – With Video

Feb 25, 2010 14 Comments ›› Pat Dollard

POLITICO:

President Barack Obama spent the morning fending off GOP charges that his health care bill was a deal-ridden monstrosity that needs to be scrapped, even tangling testily with his 2008 presidential rival John McCain.

“We’re not campaigning anymore, John,” Obama said at one point during the White House health summit, after McCain listed a litany of deals included in the bill. “The election is over now.”

McCain joked, “I’m reminded of that every day.”

Obama replied, “We can spend the remainder of the time with our respective talking points, but we’re supposed to be talking about insurance.”

By the lunch break, it was growing clearer that the pre-summit pessimism on both sides – that there was little to no hope of grand bipartisan compromise – was on target. In fact, both sides spent the bulk of the first three hours of the session trying to score tactical points, rarely veering from their scripts to extend a hand to the other side.

Obama, who called the summit as a last-ditch effort to resuscitate his stalled reform effort, left no illusion that bipartisan comity would be easy to come by, after a year of bitter sparring between the parties on the Democratic plan.

“I don’t know that these gaps can be bridged,” he said, echoing the feeling of most people on both sides of the issue.

Obama did on several occasions argue that his bill included a variety of provisions that Republicans should be eager to endorse, saying he adopted the Republican plan to cut waste and fraud in the Medicare system in whole. “Every idea about fraud and abuse, we’ve adopted in our legislation,” Obama said.

But he also tried to call out the Republicans when they fell back on their usual tactics, noting at one point that Minority Whip Eric Cantor had a six-inch-high stack of papers in front of him. “Let me just guess, that’s the 2400 page Democratic bill,” Obama said before Cantor started speaking. “These are the kinds of political things we do that prevent us from actually having a conversation.”

Still, it took less than an hour for Democrats and Republicans to spar, clashing over who had the better ideas for reform and how it should be sent through the Congress.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), in the Republican opening remarks, urged Obama and congressional Democrats to reject using reconciliation to pass part of the health care reform bill, arguing it is a rarely-used process that’s inappropriate for such sweeping legislation.
“We will have to renounce jamming this through in a partisan way,” Alexander said. “If we don’t, the rest of what we will do today will not be relevant.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gave a combative retort, saying Republicans talk about reconciliation as if it’s unusual, when in fact GOP majorities have used it more often than Democrats. “It’s as if there is a different mindset, a different set of facts than reality,” Reid said.

Obama was more measured, but the message was clear – he has no intention of taking reconciliation off the table.

“Rather than start at the outset talking about legislative process, what I suggest is we talk about the substance and how we might help the American people deal with costs, coverage, insurance, these other issues,” Obama said. “We might surprise ourselves and find out that we agree more than we disagree and that may help dictate how we move forward. It might turn out that we have too big of a gulf.”

After the contentious opening remarks, the conversation settled largely into a more wonky debate over controlling health care costs. Democrats offered anecdotes on why health care reform is needed now, while Republicans pointed out critical statements by the Congressional Budget Office and others on the Democratic health care plan.

By an hour into the summit, only six out of the more than 40 lawmakers and top administration officials present had spoken. And in fact, even the time allocation gave the two parties something to disagree on, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pointing out at around 11:45 a.m. that Republicans has 24 minutes to talk, while Democrats had 52 minutes.

“We’re going to have to be a little more disciplined in our time,” Obama nudged lawmakers from both parties, each of whom spoke for about 10 minutes.

Obama acknowledged being guilty himself, but added light-heartedly that he could do it “because I am the president.”

Democrats went into the summit wanting to show that there were many areas of agreement with Republicans – a target that congressional aides said they felt satisfied the president was hitting. Republican aides, however, said the focus on policy agreements reinforced their goal of showing the GOP is reasonable and open to reform.
But with the large number of people around the table in Blair House, the summit lacked the kind of free-wielding exchange that would allow both parties to score more rhetorical points. Each lawmaker tried to give what amounted to an opening statement on their first go-around, usually speaking for more than 10 minutes a piece.

In an another testy exchange, Obama disagreed with Alexander’s statement that the CBO had concluded that Democratic reforms will raise premiums, saying that “is just not the case.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Obama responded. “This is an example of where we’ve got to get our facts straight. Let me respond to what you just said. Because it’s not factually accurate.” He said costs for families would go down, and that the CBO says families might choose to buy better coverage that would be more expensive. “They didn’t say the actual premiums would be going up,” he said.

“With respect, you’re wrong,” Alexander said.

Obama replies: “I’m pretty certain I’m not wrong. … I promise you we’ll get this settled before the day’s out.”

The CBO found that premiums would be reduced for some policyholders, while others would see increases, depending on whether they buy insurance on the individual or group market. But the reason why some people would see their costs rise is because they would choose to buy more comprehensive insurance plans that would inevitably be more expensive.

Right from the start, Republicans hammered their central theme: the president and lawmakers have to start over.

“We have to start by putting the current bill on the shelf and starting with a clean sheet of paper,” Alexander said, as Obama looked on and jotted down some notes.

He also pushed back on the White House notion of a comprehensive bill – “we don’t do comprehensive well. Our country is too big, too complicated for Washington to write all the rules.”

The American people “have tried to say in every way they know how, that they opposed the health care that passed the senate on Christmas Eve, and more important, we want to talk about, we think we have a better idea, and that is to take many of the examples you’ve just mentioned about reducing health care costs,. . .and start over, and let’s go step by step through that goal,” Alexander said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was the first Democrat to reject the call.

Struggling families, she said, “don’t have time for us to start over. Many of them are at the end of the line with their insurance.”