I wonder what else he’s planning to give up?
Aides to President Barack Obama are putting the final touches on a new strategy to help Democrats recover from a brutal August recess by specifying what Obama wants to see in a compromise health care deal and directly confronting other trouble spots, West Wing officials tell POLITICO.
Obama is considering detailing his health-care demands in a major speech as soon as next week, when Congress returns from the August recess. And although House leaders have said their members will demand the inclusion of a public insurance option, Obama has no plans to insist on it himself, the officials said.
“We’re entering a new season,” senior adviser David Axelrod said in a telephone interview. “It’s time to synthesize and harmonize these strands and get this done. We’re confident that we can do that. But obviously it is a different phase. We’re going to approach it in a different way. The president is going to be very active.”
(H/T: Drudge) I look forward to seeing whatever plan the President’s committee of aides put together for him to push on Congress, of course. It’ll almost certainly be a platitudinous, amorphous piece of stitched-together fluff that will satisfy nobody and lecture everyone on the planet – at least, based on past experience – but at least we’ll finally have gotten the White House to actually think about and discuss what changes in health care policy the executive branch would like to see. Letting the liberal Democratic leadership in Congress do it for the President was a serious error: it’s about time that he puts his personal stamp on an actual, ‘official’ plan. In other words: it’s nice that the administration is finally taking health care reform seriously, and we look forward to seeing its tentative plan.
After we hack out all the bits of said plan that are just stupid, of course. And make sure that various concessions are made.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
“And although House leaders have said their members will demand the inclusion of a public insurance option, Obama has no plans to insist on it himself, the officials said.”
In other words, *Obama* will say he doesnt insist on it, Pelosi WILL insist on it, it will stay in the bill, be reconciled in committee and once passed Obama will sign it.
I think it is unwise to assume this is anything more than political posturing and dishonest gamesmanship.
Don’t bank on it. They could strip the House and Senate versions down to four words on a single piece of papaer (“Screw America. Love, Dems.”)… and then add the whole, thousand-page-plus bolus of crap back in during Reconciliation and hand it right off to The Socialist to sign, without a single pause or review- or even coming clean about what exactly is in the bill. There are already rumors that this is what’s intended with the Public Option: pull it with great fanfare in the House to give the Blue Dogs cover, then add it back in before signing.