Pushing for healthcare measure, Obama calls on Congress to rise above politics

Reporting from Washington — 

President Obama, framing this weekend’s expected House action on healthcare reform as “historic,” called on Congress to rise above politics and do something for the good of millions of Americans.

The president, who has taken his campaign for healthcare legislation to Ohio, Missouri and Pennsylvania in recent weeks, made another public pitch for the plan Friday at a college campus arena in nearby Fairfax, Va., before an expected House vote on Sunday.

“A few miles from here, Congress is in the final stages of a fateful debate about the future of health insurance in America,” Obama told his audience. “It’s a debate that’s raged not just for the past year, but for the past century. ...

“It’s a debate that’s not only about the cost of healthcare. ... It’s a debate about the character of our country - about whether we can still meet the challenges of our time, whether we still have the guts and the courage to give every citizen, not just some, the chance to reach their dreams,” the president said in shirt sleeves at a boisterous, campaign-style rally at the Patriot Center, an arena at George Mason University.

Obama’s job-approval ratings this week slid to a newlow of 46% in the Gallup Poll and a Pew Research Center survey as the contentious debate over healthcare consumed Capitol Hill. Republican leaders maintain that Democrats will face “a price to pay” in the November midterm congressional elections if the bill passed.

House Republican leader John Boehner vowed again Friday to do everything possible to keep the bill from becoming law.

“Now, listen, I know the president’s doing the hard sell on this bill, telling Democrat members that his presidency is on the line,” Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters.

“But this vote isn’t about saving a presidency or saving a politician,” he said. “This is about doing the right thing for the American people. And so Americans are jamming the phone lines here on Capitol Hill. They are screaming at the top of their lungs that they stop, just stop. Republicans are listening, and we’re standing with them.”

The president, likening news coverage of the healthcare debate to ESPN’s “SportsCenter” - “rock ‘em, sock ‘em robots” -- mimicked the chatter of the cable television news media: “What they like to talk about is the politics of the vote. What does it mean in November? ... What’s it going to mean for Obama? Will his presidency be crippled or will he be ‘the comeback kid.’ ...

“I don’t know how this plays politically,” the president said. “Nobody really does. ... I don’t know whether my poll numbers go down or they go up. ... I do know that this bill, this legislation, is going to be enormously important for America’s future.”

The president has attempted to frame the debate as “a vote for reform,” with opponents poised to vote against reform.

“The time for reform is now,” he said Friday. “We have waited long enough. In just a few days, a century-long struggle will culminate in a historic vote.”

He compared the healthcare legislation, offering insurance to an estimated 32 million Americans who are now uninsured, to the creation of Social Security after the Great Depression and the passage of Medicare for senior citizens in the 1960s.

“This is a patient’s bill of rights on steroids,” Obama said, pointing to provisions that start the first year of the legislation and ban insurers from dropping policyholders who become ill, and prevent insurers from rejecting people with preexisting conditions.

Obama postponed a planned trip to Indonesia and Australia until June to stay and, as White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained this week, “see this battle through.”

“The most important domestic priority here in the U.S. is going to be voted on this weekend or early next week, and I have to be there,” the president said in an interview that aired Friday on RCTI, the largest commercial television network in Indonesia.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the cost of the proposed healthcare plan at $940 billion over 10 years, with a projection that expected savings in federal programs will offer some deficit relief as well over the coming decade -- meeting the president’s demand that any legislation on healthcare must be “deficit-neutral.”

“A lot of members who have real concern about the deficit now see this as the biggest opportunity for deficit reduction,” House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Friday, suggesting that the leadership’s drive for a winning vote now has “big mo’.”

Rep. John Boccieri (D-Ohio), in announcing Friday that he plans to vote for the bill, cited the $138 billion in deficit reduction that the CBO has projected after the first 10 years of the legislation’s enactment and another $1 trillion-plus in deficit reduction in the second 10 years. He was among the Democrats who voted against a House bill last fall.

Yet House leaders, who acknowledged earlier this week that they lacked the votes needed for passage, will be working into the weekend to secure the 216 votes needed to approve the bill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday that she is “very excited about the momentum that is developing around the bill. ...

“It’s liberating legislation,” said Pelosi, pointing to requirements that no one can be denied insurance coverage. “Right now, we’re just getting votes to pass a bill.”

Democratic leaders also are considering a parliamentary move enabling the House to “deem” the Senate healthcare bill as having passed and then vote on a package of changes that reconcile differences between the Senate bill approved before Christmas and a House healthcare bill approved by a vote of 220-215 in November.

While House leaders maintain that the CBO’s projection of deficit reduction has eased the way for passage of a final package that merges House and Senate proposals, opponents maintain that the government never lives within its bounds.

“Here’s the point: This proposal is paid for,” Obama told his audience at George Mason, “unlike some of these previous schemes in Washington. We’re not taking out the credit card, young people, and charging it to you. We’re making sure this is paid for.”

With Republican leaders vowing to prevent the healthcare bill from becoming law, Rep. Dan Lungren, (R-Gold River) complained Friday on the House floor that the “deem and pass” tactic that will be considered this weekend is “extraordinary ... such an extraordinary stretch that it will be rendered unconstitutional.”

“We may very well be being prepared to embark on an unconstitutional journey,” Lungren said. “Let us not pass something for the American people that will be called into question in court challenge after court challenge after court challenge.”

In media interviews this week, the president has said that he is less concerned about the “process” of the bill’s passage than he is in winning legislation that will offer insurance to millions of Americans.

mdsilva@tribune.com