Health Care Failure: Leave it to the Eager Beaver

John Boehner and Eric Cantor sent a letter to Rahm Emmanuel in response to Obama's request for a bipartisan discussion on health care.  Boehner and Cantor detail their list of "concerns" about the discussion and suggest they would be reluctant to attend unless the current bills are scrapped.  They asked that reconciliation be taken off the table and wondered whether the special interest groups the administration had negotiated with were going to be there as well.  In short it was a laundry list of the failures of the Obama administration that played a huge role in their inability to pass their signature piece of legislation.

Who better to answer such a letter than Baghdad Bob Gibbs?   The response is a stellar piece of revisionist history and obfuscation:

The President is adamant that we seize this historic moment to pass meaningful health insurance reform legislation. He began this process by inviting Republican and Democratic leaders to the White House on March 5 of last year, and he’s continued to work with both parties in crafting the best possible bill. He’s been very clear about his support for the House and Senate bills because of what they achieve for the American people: putting a stop to insurance company abuses, extending coverage to millions of hardworking Americans, getting control of rising premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and reducing the deficit.

The President looks forward to reviewing Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out at the beginning of this process, and as recently as the State of the Union Address. He’s open to including any good ideas that stand up to objective scrutiny. What he will not do, however, is walk away from reform and the millions of American families and small business counting on it. The recent news that a major insurer plans to raise premiums for some customers by as much as 39 percent is a stark reminder of the consequences of doing nothing.

I think the President's historic moment to pass health care has passed, someone drove a truck through it.  Moreover, it is Obama who must show bipartisanship and repair his standing with Independents and he isn't likely to accomplish that by pretending he actually worked with Republicans when the evidence clearly shows otherwise.  He continues to believe he can pull the wool over voters' eyes with flowery words and a tight script.  He forgets he now has a record and frankly Independents are less than impressed with what they've seen.

Now he is signalling he has no intention of abandoning the bills the public has rejected.  I am guessing he thinks he can recreate the House Republican retreat and somehow convince the public they didn't get his point and make the Republicans look the fools in one fell swoop.  He is repeating some of the language he used that day suggesting he will review proposals that meet his "goals" and ones that stand up to objective scrutiny.  He continues to miss the fact his goals aren't consistent with the voters goals and they have looked at his proposals with an objective eye and found them wanting.

Obama is signalling the posts will always be moved here and likely has no intention of negotiating anything but his image.  He needs to put on a show to back up his positioning with lap dog Katie Couric:

"I want to consult closely with our Republican colleagues," Obama said. "What I want to do is to ask them to put their ideas on the table. . . . I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward."

so sayeth Eddie Haskell from the White House

Rush Limbaugh wisely pointed out earlier this was all a trap and advises Republicans to just say no.  The Republicans responded by asking that they start over, a position supported by the American people by the way, now Obama has said no.  Well Baghdad Bob said no, technically, as if he wouldn't run that by Obama first.  Obama buys himself a bit of plausible deniability in who backed down on efforts for bipartisanship.  Obama is the supposed eager beaver for health care though and here he proves he isn't serious about bipartisanship.  My advice to the Republican leadership, FWIW, send another letter asking Obama and crew to get back to you when they are genuinely serious about a bipartisan effort to reform health care.  They will be waiting a long time for a serious response.

More on this at Memeorandum

Barack the Blameaholic Falls off the Wagon

To be fair, we don't actually know that he was ever on the wagon or that he has recognized his addiction to blame. We do know he's at it again though. Earlier on Saturday, Obama trudged through the snow covered streets of Washington to get his blame Bush fix with his fellow Democrats at the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting.

After taking a victory lap for that monstrous 0.3 decrease in unemployment that only cost us $860 billion give or take, Obama proceeded to partake in a few shots at his predecessor as the audience no doubt egged him on.

Faced with mounting national opposition to his party’s platform, the president reminded voters the real reason the trillion-dollar stimulus package still hasn’t reduced unemployment to 8 percent as promised: Bush did it, and it’ll take a lot of time to undo it.

“The country cannot return to the “dereliction of duty that helped deliver this recession,” Obama said. He added that the previous administration’s role in the economic meltdown was the “real outrage.”

 Obama then went on to applaud the amazing accomplishments of his administration and a Democratic Congress.  You know the drill, healing the planet and turning back the tides etc:

"Then we passed almost $300 billion in tax relief, tax cuts for small businesses, tax cuts for 95% of working Americans. We put Americans to work building the infrastructure of tomorrow, doing the work America needs done.

"We passed a credit card bill of rights to protect consumers from getting ripped off by credit card companies. We put the law behind the principle of equal pay for equal work. We extended the promise of health care to 4 million more children of working families. We protected every child from being targeted by tobacco companies. We passed a service bill named for Ted Kennedy that gives young folks and old folks new ways to give back to their communities. We appointed Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. And we've begun working with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country that they love because of who they are.

 Of course that must not be good enough for the ingrates who elected him.  How else can he explain his drop in the polls:

"I was talking to Michelle the other day, and Michelle is always a good barometer. And, you know, the front page was, oh, you know, 'What's Obama going to do to get his poll numbers up, and are the Democrats all in a tizzy' and this and that. And she said, 'You know, listen, if you're the average family, if I'm a mom out there and I'm working and my husband's working but we're worried about losing our jobs or hours have been cut back, costs of our health care premiums just went up 30% and credit card company just jacked up our interest rates 39% and our home values have gone down by $100,000, our 401(k)s all banged up and suddenly someone calls up and says, So, how do you think President Obama's doing's doing right now? What are they going to say? What are they going to say?' 

Wait, didn't he just say, not three paragraphs earlier, they passed a law to stop credit card companies from ripping off their customers?  What about all those tax cuts for small businesses and that miraculous decrease in unemployment - why are these folks worrying about losing their jobs?  Hello Barack and Michelle, what are the people supposed to say, hit me up with more of that hopium you folks are smoking in DC?

Denial is often the greatest barrier to recovery in addictions treatment and here we see the denial is deeply entrenched in this administration:

"But in order to get any of these battles done, we're going to have to change the way that Washington works. Now we may not get a lot of attention for it, but we've actually begun to do that. We've reined in the power of the special interests with the toughest ethics and transparency rules of any administration in the modern era. We're the first White House ever to post our visitors online. We've excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions. 

One word springs to mind here, CSPAN.  They've excluded all those lobbyists, except for those they didn't exclude.  Clearly this is an administration in desperate need of an intervention.  I am keeping my calendar clear on November 2, 2010 for a massive nationwide intervention.

White House Official Lays Ultimate Slam on Howard Dean: "He's Irrelevant" The Left is Mostly Baffled

Via Memeorandum
Ooh burn, such a low blow against the champion of the progressive wing of the Democratic party. Savannah Guthrie reveals the anger over health care debate is not reserved for Joe Lieberman but for Howard Dean who in recent days has called for the death of widely despised health care bill.

Mika Brzezinski I won’t name names, but I heard it from several people in the Administration: Howard Dean, very not pleased, with Dr. Dean speaking out about health care reform and this plan.

Savannah Guthrie: Yeah, very irritated. Yes, isn’t it fascinating they don’t seem to be too angry at Lieberman, they’re reserving their fervor for Howard Dean, but actually, one senior official who I talked to this morning paid the highest insult which was to call him irrelevant to the entire health care debate. You know he kind of had his moment in the sun in the last week when this Medicare expansion looked like it was going to be the thing that broke the logjam between the progressives in the party and the moderates, but, of course, because of Lieberman, the Medicare expansion is gone, and now Dean is having what one official called “a tantrum.”

And they think it’s just not helpful, but they say he’s irrelevant because, bottom line is, even though he was meeting yesterday with all the Democrats, a lot of liberals did blow off steam, there’s a lot of frustration, they’re annoyed that the public option is gone, that then they compromised to do the Medicare extension, now it’s gone. At the end of the day, the moderates are holding sway over this bill, but at the end of the day the President’s been able to hold them in line and they think progressives will be with them.

Dean hasn't been shy in his criticism of the current health care bill

"This is a bigger bailout for the insurance industry than AIG," former Democratic National Committee chairman and medical doctor Howard Dean told "Good Morning America's" George Stephanopoulos today. "A very small number of people are going to get any insurance at all, until 2014, if the bill works. "This is an insurance company's dream, this bill," Dean continued. "This is the Washington scramble, and I think it's ill-advised."

Obviously his call to kill the bill has the White House enraged.  Dean's statements reflect the thinking of much of the left wing blogosphere who are baffled by the attitude towards both Dean and Lieberman:

 Joe Lieberman, who held a legislative gun to President Obama's head and threatened to kill all of health care reform, endangering the Democrats' prospects for holding on to control of Congress in the next election and endangering the President's chances at being re-elected, got personally thanked by President Obama yesterday. Thanked for trying to kill health care reform, thanked for shilling for the insurance industry. Howard Dean, who is simply advocating for the President's own campaign promise, is now being dissed by the White House.

Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake explains in a piece written for Politico; it's all about those secret deals the White House made:

More Democrats with Amnesia on Transparency

Via Memeorandum comes this report from the AP detailing Senator Coburn's 33 hour protest in the Senate after his provision requiring reports be made available to lawmakers and the public was dropped from a $33.5 billion measure funding energy and water projects.

Perhaps it is me but I could swear that right about this time last year we were hearing the word transparency being tossed around by the Democrats undies at a Tom Jones concert.   At least Senator Coburn is pressing the issue.  Grinding the Senate to a halt was a particularly brilliant move.  Coburn's protest called attention to the Democratic amnesia on transparency that caused them to drop his provision requiring reports be made available to lawmakers and the public.  Five days would seem like a reasonable amount of time to post something online, wouldn't it?  Thus far we have seen none of that from the Obama administration or the Democratically controlled House or Senate.

Surprisingly enough, no one wanted to comment on the record as to why the provision was stripped.   An aide answered the question on the condition of anonymity - no seriously:

The top House negotiator, Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., didn't recall why his side insisted that the Senate drop the transparency provision. But a Democratic aide said later that there is concern that making every report public automatically might cause agencies to be less candid in their dealing with the Appropriations Committee. The aide required anonymity to speak candidly.

It's not unusual to hear the words anonymity and candidly from this most transparent administration evah.   I hope Coburn presses the issue on transparency and lets the public see a health care bill before it is rammed through like the stimulus.