By: Jonathan Martin and Josh Gerstein
For the first time in his presidency, Barack Obama is using a prime-time news conference Wednesday night to play catch-up.
With the public souring on both his handling of health-care reform and the economy, Obama is stepping to the podium for the fourth time in six months in hopes of convincing the public he’s got a plan, to get the economy back on track and a health overhaul that will expand care to all without busting the budget.
With Democrats fractured on health-care and the GOP sensing a major political opportunity, Obama is engaged in an inside-outside strategy, cajoling members of Congress in private White House sessions while using his bully pulpit to rally public support for his plan.
So it’s health care where we start with our 10 Questions for President Obama.
1) Is it still realistic that both chambers of Congress will pass health care bills before their summer recess in August? And how worried are you that missing the deadline could endanger your hopes of getting a bill this year?
A former senator himself, Obama knows Congress works best under a deadline – and he called on both houses to pass a health bill before heading off on summer vacation. So far anyway, it’s not working. Obama suggested Monday that he was willing to bend his oft-stated deadline, saying it would be OK if the legislation is “going to spill over by a few days or a week.”
But even that may not be realistic. Senators of both parties have publicly warned against rushing through the process, and rank-and-file members in both chambers have raised concerns over everything from the high costs to whether a government-run insurance option is the best way to go, as Obama has sought.
Neither the House nor the Senate has scheduled floor votes and key committees in both have yet to even approve a bill – meaning it might be see you in September time for the president’s health-care goals.
On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) seemed to defy Obama, saying: “If we get consensus, we'll move on it. If we don't get consensus, I don't think staying in session is necessarily necessary.”
2) Who are you referring to when you cite, as you did in your radio address last week, those “special interests” in health care who “make the same old arguments, and use the same scare tactics?” And what’s the difference between honest objections to a massive overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, and what you consider obstructionism?
Obama has actually worked assiduously, and successfully, to court many of the stakeholders with a financial interest in healthcare – drug-makers, insurance companies and others who could strike a serious blow at his plan if they came out strongly against it.
He has hosted a variety of them at the White House, trumpeted the financial agreements struck with pharmaceutical companies and hospitals and used some of their endorsements in recent days to underline the support behind getting a bill passed.
Just on Tuesday, Obama touted such groups and others — he actually singled out the American Nurses Association and the American Medical Association — to highlight “the consensus” for legislation. So who are the bad guys that are trying to scuttle reform? Perhaps Obama will name names tonight.
3) You have sought to focus attention on Sen. Jim DeMint’s comments alluding to the political benefit for the GOP in blocking healthcare reform, but it’s mostly Democratic members of Congress that your own political apparatus is targeting in TV ads now on the air. Why haven’t you been more successful in convincing members of your own party on this issue so far, and how does DeMint figure into your effort to lobby Democrats?
Obama and his allies have been harping on DeMint’s reference to health care as Obama’s potential “Waterloo,” but the South Carolina senator is one of just 40 GOP senators.
It’s not the conservative DeMint but rather moderate Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and the conservative Blue Dog Democrats in the House who ultimately will decide health care’s fate. And right now, they’re not happy – particularly the fiscally conservative Blue Dogs who fear a deficit explosion if Obama gets his way.
It’s these members who have been brought down to the White House for meetings with the president.
So why is it DeMint who the White House is singling out? Clearly it’s part of the “Party of No” mantra the White House likes to use against Republicans. But perhaps it’s also to send a reminder to those recalcitrant members of Obma’s own party that failure on health care is what the opposition is pulling for – and that such failure would have grave political consequences for all Democrats.
4) You said during the campaign that you would negotiate the health care bill on C-SPAN. But now you won't even release the names of health care executives who visit the White House for what are closed door discussions. How do you reconcile what you said during the campaign with your approach now?
As part of his stump speech, Obama would often describe his vision for the process behind health care reform.
At a campaign stop in Virginia last summer, he said: "We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies -- they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”
Now, though, none of the White House negotiations are open for public consumption. And the Obama administration has rejected a request from a watchdog group to disclose the health care industry executives who have come to the White House to discuss the issue. The group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, is poised to sue Obama’s administration to obtain the records.
5) On Monday you said that “folks on Wall Street don’t feel any remorse for taking all these risks; you don’t get a sense that there’s been a change of culture and behavior as a consequence of what has happened." What do you think Wall Street needs to do to show remorse and to change its culture? And isn’t the problem with the economy right now not some Wall Streeters getting bonuses, but the fact that recession is much tougher and deeper than even your administration projected?
While nothing like the AIG bonuses that fueled so much populist resentment this spring, news of Goldman Sachs’ monster second-quarter profits and subsequent billions worth of bonuses has again focused attention on Wall Street excesses.
According to a New York Times estimate, Goldman workers could earn an average of $770,000 this year, about the same as they did during the go-go boom years. Goldman paid back the $10 billion in federal bailout money they received, freeing them of compensation restrictions.
Republicans have scored points recently by pointing out that Congress approved nearly $800 billion in stimulus spending, and yet the unemployment rate is 9.5 percent and rising. Look for Obama to ask for patience from the public that his administration is focused every day on turning around the economy.
6) Attorney General Eric Holder is considering appointing an independent prosecutor to investigate alleged abuses of detainees during the Bush era. When the White House was asked about this, officials repeated your mantra that the country should look forward, not back. What’s your view about when it’s appropriate for the White House to send signals to the Justice Department about what action it should take in regarding a criminal investigation?
Holder is wrestling with the issue of whether to appoint an independent prosecutor to determine whether crimes were committed as part of the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques”—or outside of them. While the White House has stressed Holder’s independence, it hasn’t been bashful about putting a little English on the ball. “My best guidance for you and others on this would be to look back at what the President has said over the course of the past many weeks…that our efforts are better focused looking forward than looking back,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said last week when asked about Holder’s dilemma.
7) In announcing the delay of up to six months in the report on detainee policy, White House officials said the issues were “hard” and “complicated” and that you wanted them to “get this right.” Weren’t they hard and complicated when you set the deadline earlier this year? What has changed? And are you still committed to closing Guantanamo Bay prison by January?
On his second full day in office, Obama held an Oval Office ceremony to sign executive orders setting a one-year deadline for closing Guantanamo and six-month deadlines for government task forces revamping detainee and interrogation policies. This week, the administration blew past the task force deadlines, even as it claims to be on track to close Gitmo.
“These are hard, complicated and consequential decisions. I mean, let’s not kid ourselves,” a senior administration official said at a White House briefing Monday. “We wanted to get this right,” another official said. However, the officials had no real explanation for how or why the issues turned out to be more complicated than they thought in January. They also insisted, though somewhat less than forcefully, that they are still working towards Obama’s goal of closing the controversial facility in January, even though an uproar in Congress has complicated his ability to bring prisoners to the U.S.
8) Your Secretary of State recently compared the North Korean regime attention-craving adolescents. Do you agree with that assessment, and either way, how do plan to proceed toward reining in North Korea’s missile program?
In an interview with ABC News earlier this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered a colorful description of Pyongyang: "What we've seen is this constant demand for attention, and maybe it's the mother in me or the experience that I've had with small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention.”
Continuing, she said: "Don't give it to them. They don't deserve it. They are acting out in a way to send a message that is not a message we're interested in receiving."
9) Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was recently arrested by Cambridge police at his own home. Now the African-American scholar said he plans to use the experience to focus attention on racial profiling and the black experience in the criminal justice system. Do you think Gates was justified in accusing the police of being harassed for being “a black man in America?”
Obama has avoided intervening in such racially charged incidents in the past – even drawing criticism for not speaking up more about such controversies as Jena, Louisiana in two years ago – but given Gates’ prominence (and ties to Obama’s alma mater) and his intent to draw attention to the matter, it may be tough for the president to avoid weighing in on what happened in Cambridge and larger issues relating to African-Americans and law enforcement.
10) Do you still plan on joining a Washington-area church and attending services?
Six months into his presidency, Obama has attended Sunday services just once in Washington, D.C. – at St. Johns Episcopal across from Lafayette Square on Easter.
The White House knocked down a report that the president would make the non-denominational chapel at Camp David his church home, saying that the president continues to look for a congregation. Aides say the president is concerned about disrupting the worship experience of others.
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