As the auto industry and financial markets begin to stabilize, the President says the government’s emergency interventions can now wind down. He pledges that real reform, particularly on Wall Street, must now begin.

Whether like it or not, Sarah Palin gets to say whatever she wants, and the mainstream media will simply regurgitate it.

The Associated Press ran a story on Sunday about how Sarah Palin was taken aback by President Obama’s comment regarding the US as a superpower. What she said was a total misrepresentation of the facts and the AP story just went with it.

Here’s what’s got Palin all riled up.

Obama said earlier this week that the United States must do its best to help resolve conflicts peacefully around the world, because if we don’t, it will fall on our shoulders – militarily and economically – to fix the problem.

Obama said:

But what we can make sure of is, is that we are constantly present, constantly engaged, and setting out very clearly to both sides our belief that not only is it in the interests of each party to resolve these conflicts but it’s also in the interest of the United States. It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.

Here’s what Palin said on her Facebook page:

Mr. President, is a strong America a problem?

Asked this week about his faltering efforts to advance the Middle East peace process, President Obama did something remarkable. In front of some 47 foreign leaders and hundreds of reporters from all over the world, President Obama said that “whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower.”

Whether we like it or not? Most Americans do like it.

Maybe Palin really is just as dumb as a box of hammers and she just doesn’t understand what the president said, but what Obama meant was that whether we like it or not, the US will get pulled into international conflicts because of our superpower status if we don’t work to resolve conflicts peacefully.

And if we do get drug into a conflict, it will cost American lives and treasure.

Maybe that’s the part Palin really likes – seeing people killed and taxpayer money spent on international conflicts – and any attempt to prevent that is just un-American gosh darnit.

Thanks John McCain. Thanks for introducing Sarah Palin to us, because now we get to spend an inordinate amount of time debunking her outrageously ignorant lies. It’s not like we don’t have anything else to do.

White House press conference on Mar. 31, 2010. The video and complete transcript were provided by WhiteHouse.gov on Apr. 2, 2010 at 9:06 p.m. eastern.

Press Briefing by Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton, 3/31/2010
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

12:38 P.M. EDT

MR. BURTON: Hi, guys. So we’re just going to go ahead and just get started.

Q Going to leap right in?

MR. BURTON: Yes.

Q So can we talk about the politics of the offshore drilling announcement?

MR. BURTON: Sure.

Q Both sides. How can — can you guys afford to kind of anger the environmentalists, sort of liberal side of your base, with the pretty expansive decision on offshore drilling? And then, on the other side, how much do you think it can actually help in bringing Republicans along on climate change?

MR. BURTON: Well, it’s the President’s view that what we need to do here is take a comprehensive approach to energy policy. And there are people on the right who support some aspects of that; there’s people on the left who support some aspects of that. But he didn’t go into this looking at what the political coalition was going to be getting if this passed. He went into this thinking what’s the best policy for our country and how do we get it done.

It’s something that he talked about on the campaign trail; it’s something that he’s talked about for a very long time. So I think that for people who have followed the President, a lot of this policy isn’t much of a surprise to them.

Q Right, but –

MR. BURTON: One thing I would say, though, Jennifer, is just that I was — the President was encouraged this morning to see Senator McConnell’s spokesperson say that this was an issue that he had spoken specifically with President Obama about. And so it does look like there’s some support on both sides of the aisle. We’ll have a rigorous debate about this and hopefully get something done.

Q Well, can you talk, though, specifically about environmentalists? Obviously they’re not happy with the way this decision played out. So how much can you afford — understood that it’s a decision he had kind of hinted at, hinted he was going to make, but at the same time he has to deal with the fallout from that decision. So how does that play out for you?

MR. BURTON: Sure. Well, we’re the Democratic Party; we often have disagreements among our friends. But the President is going to continue to talk to folks in the environmental community, and people in the Democratic Party, and people in the Republican Party, to make the most amount of progress that we can make on this critical issue. It’s important because we need to decrease our dependence on foreign oil and we need to move forward on some of these investments in order to create some of the most important jobs that we can create here in the 21st century.

The President’s view is that the country that comes out on top — on investments in renewable energy and on creating new technology — is going to be leader in the 21st century, and he’s not playing for second place.

Q So the drilling announced today — there was no thought about the implications this might have for advancing the climate change legislation that seems to be running into obstacles in Congress?

MR. BURTON: Well, I would say that it’s obviously a part of the climate legislation and the entire package that the President is working with Congress to move forward. So I would say that this is mostly about coming through on a promise that he made to the American people that he would have a comprehensive energy plan that would include some increased domestic production of energy but also some big investments in renewable technology, as well as finding ways to promote efficiency and things like that. So all these things are connected.

Q Well, Robert yesterday showed sort of acceptance of a timetable of getting financial regulatory reform through Congress onto the President’s desk by no later than September. What is the timetable you all are thinking of for climate change legislation?

MR. BURTON: I don’t have specific dates for you necessarily, but this is something that the President thinks we need to move forward on as quickly as possible. As recently as a couple weeks ago he had a bipartisan group of senators into the White House to talk about some of the proposals that they have, some ways that we can come together in order to make progress on this issue. And he’s going to continue to work with them in order to make progress as fast as we can.

Q Does the President believe that this can be done before the midterm elections in November?

MR. BURTON: His goal is to do this as fast as he possibly can.

Yunji.

Q I’m curious, what changed? I mean, the President, again and again on the campaign trail, said that this was — this would be insignificant, that expanding these kind of leases would not do much in terms of consumer relief, short term or long term. So what’s different?

MR. BURTON: Well, what the President said was that there’s no silver bullet when it comes to decreasing our dependence on foreign oil and having a comprehensive view on energy. If you remember the conversation that was being had, a lot of people treated offshore drilling as a panacea to solve all of our problems as it related to energy. But what the President thought was that it just had to be one part of a comprehensive strategy to dealing with that.

That’s why, over the course of the presidency, you’ve heard him, at the State of the Union, talk about this, and in other venues talk about it. He’s talked about increasing production of domestic oil. He’s talked about finding ways to get nuclear energy moving in this country, clean coal moving in this country, and all those different things.

But along with the increased production, he’s talked about ways to make vehicles more efficient. There’s new fuel-efficiency standards, which is something that was very hard to get an agreement on but, bringing all the relevant parties to the table, he was able to. He’s done things to make the federal fleet more fuel efficient, using hybrid vehicles, buying plug-in cars, to make sure that we’re doing everything we can, from the federal government’s standpoint, in order to decrease our dependence on foreign oil.

So nothing has changed. What you see here today is a fulfillment of what the President said he was going to do.

Q But the President said that this was insignificant. If it’s insignificant, then — and you have the kind of political fallout that Jennifer is talking about potentially happening, then what makes this worth it?

MR. BURTON: What the President said was that this in and of itself would not be enough to get us on a path to energy independence, and so as one part of his strategy, finding places where you can reasonably and safely drill offshore to increase production is a key part of that. So — but it’s just one part of that. And that’s what he said in the campaign and that’s what he’s following through on today.

Dan.

Q Why did the President not go further in terms of drilling off of Alaska where it’s believed there are a lot of resources?

MR. BURTON: Well, what the President thinks we ought to do is use the best science available and the safest methods that we can in order to find oil and gas, and then go and retrieve it and use it domestically. So what this proposal represents is what he and the team of experts around him think is the best way to go about that in the most responsible and safe way.

Q On health care, what’s going on behind the scenes in terms of the President selling to the American people — beyond just the trip that we’re seeing this week — selling to the American people the short-term and long-term benefits of this new law?

MR. BURTON: Well, as the President said when we were going through this process to get health care passed into law, he was going to spend some time going out talking to the American people specifically about the short-term and the long-term benefits that they were going to get out of it. And that’s what you see. Tomorrow the President will be in Maine where he’ll be talking about some of the benefits that small businesses will get in the short term and the long term as it relates to health care.

So you’ll see the President travel and talk about it. You’ll see members of the administration talking about it. And we’re going to continue to make sure the American people know exactly what’s in this bill for them and when it comes into effect.

Q Bill, I want to revisit a health care issue from yesterday. Regarding the write-downs for big companies like AT&T, Caterpillar, I’m unclear — is it the White House’s position that these write-downs are purely political; that they could have been done in a more gradual way? Or is it the position that, yes, their hands are tied by accounting rules and they had to take these write-downs immediately?

MR. BURTON: Well, I’m not going to make a statement on the motivations of people announcing what 30-year projections are saying about the impact that health care reform will have on their business. But it’s the White House’s view that all the benefits in health care reform will have a much greater positive impact on those businesses than the loss of a double subsidy will to their business.

Q You seem to be scoffing at a breakdown over 30 years. Is that true that you’re saying this –

MR. BURTON: No, I’m not scoffing at it. I’m just pointing it out.

Q Okay, and secondly — it sounded like scoffing. Secondly, I sent you a high-priority email yesterday — I’m sure you saw it — but I was questioning the reading habits of Mr. Gibbs. Has Mr. Gibbs actually read all the reports he cited yesterday to justify — to claim that there will a bending of the cost curve in the health care bill?

MR. BURTON: I assume that he has, because he’s a really fast reader and he’s been very interested in the subject. But the good news for you is that I’m just doing this part-time, and you’ll have your chance to ask him directly.

Bill.

Q Does the President believe that his proposal today will make it easier to raise the cap and trade bill and actually get it debated in the Senate?

MR. BURTON: Well, the President’s view is that what he did today is an important part of moving it forward. And so the President has been –

Q But I’m asking about the politics.

MR. BURTON: I understand that. And I know that here in Washington — I haven’t been here that long, but I know that everything is viewed through a lens of who does this help, who does this hurt, who’s up, who’s down. The President’s view is that this is the best policy, and that working with members of the Senate on both sides — the Republicans and the Democrats — this is policy — that there are things that people of both political persuasions can agree to and we can move forward on it.

Q Presumably you’ve also been here long enough to know that that’s the way they think inside, too.

MR. BURTON: Well, I wouldn’t go that far. Having talked to the folks who I work with here in the West Wing all day today, I know that there is a real belief that what we’ve proposed today doesn’t just follow through on what the President promised on the campaign for the sake of following through on it. It also would put our country on a new track towards more domestic production of energy, towards more renewable energy use, and towards creating jobs of the future.

Q If you’re willing to set deadlines for other legislation, will you set a deadline for getting cap and trade passed?

MR. BURTON: I don’t have a deadline for you today. I just know the President wants to move forward on this as fast as possible.

Savannah.

Q Given that you guys haven’t considered the politics at all with this, is it possible there was a strategic blunder here by conceding so much — doing offshore drilling, you’ve announced new grants for nuclear reactors — without getting any concessions from Republicans? You didn’t have any Republicans standing up there with the President today. Is it possible that you’ve kind of given away the store without any guarantees that you’ll get Republican support in exchange for that?

MR. BURTON: Well, I’d start by saying that actually Senator McConnell’s spokesperson’s statement was very encouraging, that this was an issue that he had brought up specifically with the President and that we believe that we’ll be able to work with Republicans on. But also, like I said, this — none of this should have been a surprise to anybody. We’ve been talking about all these different elements for a very long time and the President is following through on promises that he made to have a comprehensive energy strategy.

So in terms of the politics of this, we think that there are good things in this package that appeal to people of all political persuasions and that in the short term, not the long term, we’re going to be able to move forward and pass some of this into law.

Q Well, McConnell — in his statement, which I just read, actually, since you mentioned that, kind of frames it as a small step. All the Republican statements say — have kind of a lukewarm response to it. Will the President get involved as closely as he was by the end of health care? Did he learn something from the health care debate that he plans to use in this debate?

MR. BURTON: Well, I would say for starters I don’t think there is anybody who anticipated that the President would roll out an energy plan and people on the Republican side would be cheerleading it right from the get-go. But if you saw what happened over the course of the health care debate, where you had senators saying that this would be the President’s Waterloo, stop this at all costs, this is the way that we can halt the agenda of the President, I think even lukewarm statements are a step in the right direction.

Mark.

Q Bill, to what extent is the administration joining the chorus of those who chant, “drill, baby, drill”?

MR. BURTON: Well, I would say that this comprehensive approach is a lot less “drill, baby, drill” and more “drill where it’s responsible, promote efficiency, invest in clean energy, and create jobs of the future.” I know that doesn’t fit on a t-shirt quite as well, but that’s a lot more about what President Obama thinks is the right direction for this country.

Q And is it the plan to expand oil and gas leases throughout the Atlantic Ocean? I read a figure of 160 million acres of ocean would be available for new oil and gas drilling.

MR. BURTON: I don’t know the specifics on the acreage. I think there’s actually a call happening right now that some of your colleagues are on where they’re going through some of those particulars.

Roger.

Q Bill, looking ahead to Friday, the jobs report comes out, as you know, and the President is going to be down in North Carolina. The analysts so far seem to suggest that this will be showing job creation for the second time since the recession started. Does that suggest that the White House will stop now on offering any more jobs plans, or are you going to kind of lay back and let things take hold and see where it goes?

MR. BURTON: Well, unless the jobs report comes back and says that we’ve created 8.5 million jobs in this last month, the President is going to treat this jobs report the same way he’s created all the — he’s treated all the rest of them, which is to say that we’ve got a lot more work to do.

And there’s analysts across the spectrum who have different views of what the jobs report is going to say, and I know there’s different factors that will play into this specific one. Last month there was the huge snowstorm, and this month we might see some of the reverse effects of that. I’ve seen reports that the Census Bureau has hired thousands of folks. So there’s a lot of different factors that we’ll see in this jobs report.

But the President is committed to putting the American people back to work and keeping this economy on track. And the jobs report that comes out on Friday is just going to be one set of data, but it’s not necessarily going to mean the President is going to change course when it comes to doing everything that he can to move through some of the ideas that he’s put forth on helping small businesses, helping big businesses, helping everybody who’s hiring that he can to create an environment where people can create jobs.

Q So you’re leaving the door open for another jobs creation package at some point, if needed?

MR. BURTON: Well, keep in mind that some of the things that the President has talked about even as recently as December have not come to a vote, haven’t been passed, and so some of his jobs ideas are still out there, including some of the things to — since this is energy day — but to make homes more efficient and give people credits to retrofit their own houses and that sort of thing. So the President is still very much focused on creating jobs.

Q One just minor housekeeping question. Will the First Family’s tax returns be released either Friday or over the weekend?

MR. BURTON: I don’t know the timing on that, but they’re generally released and they’ll be out sooner than you think. I don’t have a date for you.

Lester.

Q Thank you very much. And thank you for your very crisp answers. Does the President believe that the Holy Father has been fairly treated by The New York Times and The Washington Post?

MR. BURTON: That’s not something I’ve spoken to him about. I’ll see what I can find out.

Q You will? Good. (Laughter.) Why does the President believe that it is fair to bar all private-school children from the Easter Egg Roll, including scholarship students at Sidwell Friends?

MR. BURTON: I’m not familiar with the Easter Egg Roll policy, but I would direct you to –

Q But it’s been announced. You must be aware of the announcement.

MR. BURTON: Like I said, I’m not fully familiar with the Easter Egg Roll policy. I appreciate the question. But you should direct it to the East –

Q You’ll get me an answer then?

MR. BURTON: No, I would direct you to the East Wing where they know a little more about it.

April.

Q Yes, today is March 31st, the deadline for the Black Farmers $1.25 [billion] congressional approval for its settlement. Robert was supposed to come back with information about if the President supported an extension — because we understand that CBC members as well as the Black Farmers were looking for an extension. Do you have any information about the President supports an extension to this deadline after 15 years of their wait?

MR. BURTON: I checked in with Leg Affairs after you asked that question yesterday, and they told me that they are in fact working with Congress with some urgency to get this done as fast as possible. I don’t have any specific timing for you, but this is something that they’re working to make progress on to make sure that we get this done.

Q So it’s not going to happen today, but you mean that they could possibly use the extension — I mean, because today is the deadline and they’re not there –

MR. BURTON: Well, not knowing the particulars of the specific settlement, I’m letting you know that the legislative team is working to get this done as fast as possible.

Q Well, let me ask you this as well — since they have been waiting for 15 years in this Pickford case, the Black Farmers want to know if they can meet with the President, especially after he announced it in his 2011 budget and put out a paper saying he strongly supports it. And they wanted to know if they could sit down and talk to the President to push more so this administration to make it happen, since they’ve waited 15 years.

MR. BURTON: I don’t know if there’s a meeting in the works. I can certainly check on it, but I don’t know if that’s in the works.

Q Is this administration open to meeting with them at least?

MR. BURTON: I haven’t spoken to anybody on that, so I don’t know.

Bill.

Q Bill, you said a couple times already today that the President’s policy is to drill where it’s responsible. So far I’ve only heard about Virginia. Can you give us an idea of other places where the administration believes it’s responsible to drill?

MR. BURTON: Well, some of the other areas that were talked about in the reports today are up on the northern coast of Alaska, down in the Gulf region — areas like that.

Q Are there any plans for drilling off the coast of California?

MR. BURTON: That is not a part of this.

Q Out of consideration?

MR. BURTON: I can’t speak to the entire rest of this administration, but I can tell you that it’s not a part of the President’s energy plan.

Q I’m sorry if this has already been mentioned, but to what extent was this discussed with Democratic leaders on the Hill before it was rolled out today?

MR. BURTON: We speak with Democratic leaders on the Hill every day and –

Q They were well aware this was coming? I mean, have you taken the temperature of Democrats on the Hill?

MR. BURTON: I assume that that has happened. We talk to Democratic leaders every day. It wasn’t a secret that our energy policy was coming out. Folks got a heads-up that it was happening. And obviously the President has a very close relationship with Speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid and it’s, of course, one of the things that they do talk about from time to time.

Ann.

Q On the West Coast of Florida, when you’re talking about the eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico — he says that he would — if the ban were to be lifted, he’d like to see more exploration there. Will the President ask Congress to lift the ban?

MR. BURTON: Well, everyplace has specific regulations that they have to deal with in order to move leases, to actually put in the rigs. There’s the exploratory phase that they have to go through. So — what’s your specific question about the Eastern Gulf?

Q The statement you all put out says that in the Eastern Gulf, which remains under a congressional moratorium — right? But if it were to be lifted, he thinks there should be more drilling closer to the western coast of Florida.

MR. BURTON: Well, I don’t want to get into water that’s too deep for me when we’re talking about the Gulf of Mexico. (Laughter.) But I would encourage you to ask the folks at Interior.

Q Bill, how about — for years, some of the arguments that opponents of drilling used is that, first of all, as the President said when he was a candidate, it doesn’t come up with a single gallon of gas in the short term, it’s way long off; and, number two, that the — well, answer just that part. When he pounded the lectern back in 2008 and said, I won’t do it because it won’t come up with anything immediate — what flipped him on that?

MR. BURTON: Well, the President’s view — and I was saying this earlier — is that this is not a silver bullet to the answer to the energy question that we have.

Q But what changed?

MR. BURTON: But it’s one part. It’s one part. And this is something that he has said over the course of the campaign. So people who voted for him, people who covered him, people who were watching this election knew that if you pulled the lever for Barack Obama in November of 2008, what you were going to get was a President who, as part of a comprehensive energy strategy, was going to support some drilling where it made sense, was going to promote efficiency, was going to invest in renewables. But he was going to take a comprehensive view, and not just take the short view that drilling was the answer to all of our answers.

Q And the other aspect of that is the complaint against it was that the drilling — there are a lot of leases out there sitting there untouched for years. How many leases, and what kind of exploration could go forward that the private companies just aren’t doing?

MR. BURTON: I actually, Ann, have to say, regret this — I have the specific numbers for you. They’re sitting upstairs on my desk.

Q Well, I’ll be up to see you. (Laughter.)

MR. BURTON: But I will make sure that I get you those numbers — and anybody else who is interested in them.

Glen.

Q Bill, in the run-up to Copenhagen, the administration took its share of criticism from conservative groups who said that you were sort of in the pocket of the environmental community. What do you think this says about the President’s attitude towards environmentalists and his willingness to stand up for them even if they don’t agree with him?

MR. BURTON: Well, I — Glen, I was saying this earlier, but I just — I don’t see it in that political lens necessarily. If the President had done something today that he hadn’t promised that he was going to do, that we hadn’t telegraphed from the campaign through the State of the Union of this year, through all the different things that we’ve said about energy, then I would say that maybe we could have a conversation about what this means for standing up to whomever. But this is something the President said he was going to do, and I think that for the most part, people oughtn’t feel surprised about it.

Q Just to follow up on what Sam was asking about the contact with the Hill. If you sort of look at this map, it is — it appears to be carefully crafted and tailored. You have some drilling on the north short of Alaska; you have more restrictions on the south. You also have the drilling off the coast of Virginia. To what extent did you discuss the creation of this map with Senator Warner in Virginia, Senator Landrieu in Louisiana? Was there a back-and-forth prior to this?

MR. BURTON: On the actual process for figuring out the places where it made most sense to explore new places to drill I would direct you to the Department of Interior.

Peter.

Q Can I ask about — yesterday in the President’s statement on Iran with President Sarkozy, he says weeks, not months, on a sanction resolution. Can you give us any more understanding of why he’s saying that, or what makes him think he can get it on that time frame? What’s happening in terms of the discussions about — with the Chinese at this point or –

MR. BURTON: Well, for starters, as the President expressed yesterday, there’s a real sense of urgency as it relates to working to apply pressure to Iran. And there are some very intense conversations happening at the United Nations right now that we’re able to make some real progress on. And the President feels like we have more support in the international community for sanctions than we’ve ever had before and he feels very confident that this spring we will be able to move forward with an agreement of those nations.

Q How important is it to get a sanctions resolution, even if it doesn’t include everything that he originally might have wanted it to have?

MR. BURTON: Well, the President obviously — the United States is not the only country who is dealing with this issue. And so we have to work with some of our foreign partners to apply as much pressure as we can.

You brought up the Chinese. The Chinese know that it’s not in their interest to have a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, and we’re confident that we’re going to be able to work with them to move forward on meaningful pressure on Iran.

So I would say that the President takes the long view. He wants to apply as much pressure as we can, and he’s confident we’re going to be able to do that.

Q Thanks, Bill. As you know, gas prices have been on the rise over the past few months. I’ve seen $4 a gallon here in Washington, D.C. To what extent does the White House believe that the proposal the President announced today will bring down the cost of gasoline for motorists across the country?

MR. BURTON: I don’t know about the immediate impact because of course all these different things that we’re doing have to go through different phases, right? You’ve got some places where you can start drilling a lot more soon than in other places. And so the length of time that it takes for the oil to get out of the ground and into the supply is going to take a little while.

So I don’t know that — I’m not a speculator, so I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen on the price of a barrel of oil today. But I can tell you that over the long term this is going to save the American people money, it’s going to decrease our dependence on foreign oil, and it’s going to allow them to know that our energy future is secure.

Q So long term then — you say you don’t know about the immediate impact it may have — long term, you think that the price of gasoline for motorists across the country will come down as a result of the proposal the President announced today?

MR. BURTON: I think that as a result of the proposal the President announced today, our country will have a lot more energy security and a lot less dependence on foreign oil. But in terms of the ups and downs of the market, I’m not going to get into that.

Q Did that enter into the calculus of the White House in making this decision, that perhaps this would bring down the cost of gasoline for motorists?

MR. BURTON: Well, obviously as we get into the summer, gas prices go up. And at a time when the economy is not doing very well, that can have a real pinch on families who are unemployed, or families who are underemployed, or families who are feeling the pinch from all sorts of different aspects of the economy — rising tuition costs, rising utility costs, and things like that.
And so the President does want to do things that make energy more affordable for the American people. But I would say that this comprehensive approach is the best way to do that for the long term for — as it relates to energy and as it relates to our economy.

Thank you.

END
1:08 P.M. EDT

The Tea Partiers will fail because for them to succeed we would need to shred the US Constitution and start over. That would require a revolution, and that’s not going to happen.

You just have to examine what they stand for. They claim to be strict constitutionalists, but they can’t stop screaming that what Democrats are doing is unconstitutional – against the will of the people.

The Tea Partiers must have forgotten that Democrats won two elections – one in 2006 and another one in 2008.

Obama and Congressional Democrats campaigned on health care reform. So it’s disingenuous for the Tea Partiers to now claim that Democrats are defying the will of the people by pursuing the agenda that they campaigned on.

In a representative republic, the people’s will is determined by elections and not protests – just ask liberals who rallied by the tens of thousands to stop the Iraq war in 2003.

But if the Tea Partiers have their way, no matter who gets elected, a radical right-wing agenda must be adhered to. If not, bricks will be thrown, guns will be drawn, politicians spat on and death threats – thinly-veiled  and otherwise – will be hurled.

The problem with the Tea Party is that they have no faith or respect for our democracy. They seem to not realize that when liberals win elections, they have not only a right, but an obligation, to implement the agenda that they campaigned on.

What’s so gut-busting laugh-out-loud funny is that conservatives keep trying to portray President Obama as a left-wing weirdo sitting around smoking hash and lathering himself up with patchouli oil. If you look at his policies — yes, even health care reform — it’s pretty clear that Obama is marginally left-of-center.

Take for instance his plan to open up offshore drilling on both coasts and Alaska. Environmentalist heads are exploding. His liberal base is freaking losing it. Well, maybe they aren’t, because they’ve known for a long time that Obama is no beacon of liberal policy.

In the 2008, the real liberal running was Hillary Clinton. Obama was the moderate. He campaigned on offshore drilling and other not-so-liberal policies.

But that hasn’t stopped the GOP and Fox and friends from branding the president with the liberal tag. Watch Fox News for one day and count the number of times someone refers to Obama as the most liberal president, or person, to ever walk the face of the Earth.

There’s a reason that so many uneducated and un-curious Americans think Obama is the anti-christ – they watch Fox News. But the reality of Obama’s policies do not reflect this out-of-whack caricature of him.

If Obama was a true liberal, he wouldn’t be proposing domestic offshore oil drilling. According to the New York Times story today, his plan would yield about 3 years worth of oil and 2 years worth of natural gas. That hardly seems worth further alienating your base Mr. President.

No, if Obama were a liberal he’d be pushing full steam ahead with that green economy he campaigned on. He’d be cracking down on US auto manufacturers to get their gas mileage down to something better than what they were doing in 1983, and rolling out electric cars too. He’d be building wind farms, giving tax breaks for solar panel installations and raising taxes on gas guzzlers and polluters.

If he were a liberal, Obama would be implementing an aggressive plan of conservation while moving forward to replace our fossil fuel energy infrastructure with a renewable one. A true liberal would not be proposing offshore drilling.

What’s most shocking about this offshore drilling plan is that the president thinks, according to the New York Times story, that this anti-environment proposal is going to win GOP support. Obama is certainly much smarter than I, but there’s only so many times you can throw your base under the bus for a misguided attempt to gain Republican votes. It isn’t going to happen – move on.

Despite what right-wing fringers like Bill Kristol and Glenn Beck say, the White House hasn’t raised taxes and they even show you have to take advantage of new tax cuts.

From the White House: “Did you know that there are more than a dozen Recovery Act tax cuts working families can take advantage of this tax season? Check out this online tool and find out how much you can save.”

Huffington Post’s Paul Abrams is a “professional iconoclast” and co-founder breakupthebigbanks.com and had this to say about this historic week of Democracy in America.

While President Obama and Congress wrestled health care reform to a successful conclusion and tacked on Student Loan Reform, Secretary of State Clinton concluded a deal with Russia to reduce nuclear arsenals, and Russia and China signaled frustration with Iran that may result in their joining sanctions. The President, the Vice-President and the Secretary of State practiced ‘tough love’ to Israel, and stood firm when vehemently attacked, a requirement if the US is going to bring this 60-year conflict to the resolution about which everyone knows not only the general contours, but most of the details.

Read Abrams’ complete column on Huffington Post.

The consensus among the talking heads, political wonks, hacks and bloviators is that Democrats will lose big in November’s elections.

The logic is that the party in the White House always gets their ass handed to them in the first election after the president takes office. That’s what happened in 1994 after Clinton beat Bush in 1992. It didn’t happen in 2002 following George W. Bush’s controversial election in 2000.

The mainstream media and pundits are also convinced that voters are going bludgeon Democrats over their passage of health care reform. Following passage of Medicare in 1965, Republicans picked up 47 House seats in the 1966 election. Democrats still held a 247 to 187 majority in the House, but it was a good year for Republicans. Besides Medicare and Civil Rights legislation passage, there was also an unpopular Vietnam war raging and race riots sweeping the nation.

However, just like the prospectus for a mutual fund, past performance is not proof of future performance. And if you think that people paid to blather on MSNBC, Fox News and CNN are speaking the truth, or know what they’re talking about, means you haven’t been paying attention – these fools are wrong more than the weather man. Just remember what Bob Dylan said about the weather man.

As far as health care reform is concerned, it’s hard to see how getting beat by the GOP and failing to pass health care reform legislation would have proved a winner for Democrats in November. One things that is a constant in US history is that Americans like it when things get done and they like to vote for winners and not losers.

But if Democrats want to pull out big wins in November there’s a hanging fastball that they just need to swing at – take on the bankers. It’s a guaranteed home run. Everyone from all walks of life, whether Tea Partiers or left-wing anti-war activists, everyone hates bankers. Many Americans reflexively loath bankers and Wall Street big shots.

Senate Democrats and House members need to go back to the drawing board and produce some tough new regulations on bankers and Wall Street fatcats. There needs to be a campaign to rid the nation of banks “too big too fail” and to set up a strong consumer protection agency that’s not part of the Federal Reserve. Democrats need to beef up the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory agencies either with new legislation or with the power of the Executive.

Let the GOP campaign supporting of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and Wall Street hucksters.

This the issue an overwhelming majority of Americans care about, and if the Democrats hit it hard – they not only won’t lose in November, they could even have greater majorities in both houses.

I know many Americans hate progress, change, liberals, equality and workers, but it still surprises me when I see so many regular folks fight so hard to protect wealthy executives and corporations.

I wonder if CEOs for big pharma and health insurance companies sit around drinking scotch and laughing their asses off watching YouTube videos of all the boobs rallying to protect their positions of power.

I mean think about it, the Tea Partiers fought tooth and nail to protect health insurance companies so they can deny them – the protesters – health care, to take away their health care when they need it and to bankrupt them when they get sick.

It makes no sense.

And who do we have to thank for this mind-boggling insanity? President Ronald Reagan. It wasn’t so much the man as it was the time. Reagan, like all presidents, don’t create movements but they ride them.

The 1980s was the “Me Decade.” It was a time when the Baby Boomers were coming of age and they wanted, not just their slice, but the entire American pie. It was a decade plagued with un-checked greed and individualism. Either you were a Gordon Gekko, you wanted to be him or at the very least respected his tenacity and ruthlessness.

The last thing we needed was government intervention and taxes to slow down our quest for all of the money in the world.

There’s no doubt that this anti-government sentiment was rooted in the 1960s and 1970s when the government was doing some pretty horrible things. We had the Vietnam war and we lost. We had Watergate and we lost again. We did get civil rights legislation and Medicare, but the GOP successfully leveraged that as part of its “southern strategy.”

Animosity towards the government was strong on both sides of our political spectrum, and so when Reagan came in saying that it’s “morning in America,” people liked it.

Taxes for the wealthy were slashed and slashed and slashed again. Banking regulation was relegated to the garbage heap. We didn’t want to pay taxes, we wanted voodoo economics.

The idea behind voodoo economics was that by reducing government spending (that didn’t happen), reducing taxes (that did happen), reducing regulation (that happened) and controlling inflation (see Federal Reserve) the wealthy would get so rich some of that money would trickle down to the workers.

That’s called a top-down approach to economics – make the rich really rich and we all benefit. The problem is that it didn’t work.

What happened is that income inequality skyrocketed. While the rich were paying less in taxes, government spending wasn’t reduced and therefore deficits went up and the burden was placed squarely on the shoulders of the middle class. The money did trickle down. It trickled a little here and a little there, but unfortunately, trickle-down economics is just that – a trickle.

And so for the last 30 years, the rich got really rich and the rest of Americans were left with bailing out the Saving and Loans institutions that failed in the ’80s, the hedge fund debacle in the ’90s and the most recent Wall Street bankers who ushered in the Great Recession.

History should be our guide to economic and tax policy. When the rich don’t pay their fair share, like they didn’t in the “Roaring Twenties” which lead to the Great Depression. While we were under the spell of voodoo economics, we all suffered the consequences with the Great Recession. We can’t have an economic system that encourages economic inequality.

You see, one of the fundamental components of a tax system is to distribute the wealth. Either wealth goes up to the rich or down to the masses. Under Reaganomics it went up. Wealth redistribution is not socialism. It’s not communism. It’s how taxation works. And as a society we have to decide who should get the money – the wealthy or the rest of us.

A progressive taxation system is a bottom-up approach. It’s a belief that the real economic engine of this country isn’t the 1 percent of us who are wealthy, but the 99 percent who aren’t. If we have money, we buy a new car every couple of years. We buy new clothes. We go out to dinner. We go on a vacation with our family. The richest among us already do those things regardless of their tax burden, but the rest of us don’t.

It’s the workers of this nation that make this economy strong. When we have money, we spend it.

But the tide is changing. Americans have realized that slashing taxes on the wealthy doesn’t lead to economic prosperity but just the opposite. And when President Obama signed health care reform into law yesterday, he was saying that he supports the workers – the middle class. He said it’s time for the wealthy to start paying their fair share.

Now Obama needs to repeal the Bush tax cuts and then some. What America needs is a return to a progressive tax system and an end to laissez-faire government regulation of our financial system. Obama has a lot of work to do, because Americans don’t want voodoo economics anymore, but those who control the wealth and the GOP surely do, and they’ll stop at nothing to keep things as unfair as possible.

–
In Health Care Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality

On his radio show today, Glenn Beck disagreed with a nun who said that Jesus would support the recently passed health care reform bill.

As is often the case with Beck’s radio show – it got racial and ignorant.

Read the entire story on Examiner

Too many Americans either don’t know or don’t like to think critically. It’s much more comfortable to just know what you know and that’s that. But critical thinking isn’t an optional component of living in a civilized society – it’s vital.

That’s why you need to read Frances Moore Lappé’s story “Let’s Drop the Good Guys vs. Bad Guys Talk, We Need to Grow Up as a Species.”

Bad people are not to blame for our problems and better people can’t make everything right. We need to create the social conditions that bring out the best in everyone.

Let’s Drop the Good Guys vs. Bad Guys Talk, We Need to Grow Up as a Species

Here’s a video round-up of Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) from The Rachel Maddow Show explaining Stupak’s Stupak Amendment.

The consensus is that President Obama is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people.

Regardless of what happens with health care reform, Obama has failed to create a rally cry for America. His campaign message of hope and change played well for candidate Obama, but this is the real world now. Now is the time for leadership not campaign speeches.

What Obama failed to realize is that bipartisanship is not going to happen – not today. He foolishly still thinks that if he gives Republicans enough of this or that, they’ll come around. In doing so, he squandered a super-majority in the Senate, weakened health care reform and has made his presidency into a series of false-starts and missed deadlines.

Obama needed to rally his political party around his agenda, but he didn’t. He should have taken a no-holds-bar approach to passing meaningful legislation. He needed to play hard-nose political party politics.

If he had done that, Republicans and Fox News would have labeled him a radical leftist pushing a socialist agenda, but that happened anyway. In the current political atmosphere any Democrat would be labeled a commie. For some reason, we’re back to red-baiting again.

By trying to be the appeaser in chief, Obama has gained nothing. What he’s left with is a watered-down health care bill, an economy that’s still floundering, a radicalized right that’s reaching deafening decibels, two wars and very little political capital left to do anything about any of it.

Here’s what blogger Dana Blankenhorn said about Obama this week.

Barack Obama has no choice. He must play this hand by Nixon’s rules. You can’t impose new rules until you’ve won enough hands that the old rules no longer apply. That means narrow, partisan majorities, and intense organization of his own people against the common enemy that is the modern Republican Party.

Even though he doesn’t believe Republicans have any ill motives, he must in the near term convince the rest of us they do, or we go back to Argentina and America will never come back.

What Blankenhorn means about “Nixon’s rules” is this.

Richard Nixon’s concept of Conflict held that majorities had to protect themselves from various minorities. Only those who were inside the Thesis deserved protection. Outsiders (and this concept eventually extended to all Democrats) were suspect. Their motives were not those of ‘us,’ they were ‘them’ and they had to be defeated for ‘us’ to be safe.

The notion of “the other” was the foundation for Nixon’s “southern strategy.”

And here’s what New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote about Obama today.

The problem is not necessarily that Obama is trying to do too much, but that there is no consistent, clear message to unite all that he is trying to do. He has variously argued that health care reform is a moral imperative to protect the uninsured, a long-term fiscal fix for the American economy and an attempt to curb insurers’ abuses. It may be all of these, but between the multitude of motives and the blurriness (until now) of Obama’s own specific must-have provisions, the bill became a mash-up that baffled or defeated those Americans on his side and was easily caricatured as a big-government catastrophe by his adversaries.

Obama prides himself on not being ideological or partisan — of following, as he put it in his first prime-time presidential press conference, a ‘pragmatic agenda.’ But pragmatism is about process, not principle. Pragmatism is hardly a rallying cry for a nation in this much distress, and it’s not a credible or attainable goal in a Washington as dysfunctional as the one Americans watch in real time on cable. Yes, the Bush administration was incompetent, but we need more than a brilliant mediator, manager or technocrat to move us beyond the wreckage it left behind. To galvanize the nation, Obama needs to articulate a substantive belief system that’s built from his bedrock convictions. His presidency cannot be about the cool equanimity and intellectual command of his management style.

That he hasn’t done so can be attributed to his ingrained distrust of appearing partisan or, worse, a knee-jerk “liberal.” That is admirable in intellectual theory, but without a powerful vision to knit together his vision of America’s future, he comes off as a doctrinaire Democrat anyway. His domestic policies, whether on climate change or health care or regulatory reform, are reduced to items on a standard liberal wish list. If F.D.R. or Reagan could distill, coin and convey a credo ‘nonideological’ enough to serve as an umbrella for all their goals and to attract lasting majority coalitions of disparate American constituencies, so can this gifted president.

At the end of the day, it may be that his critics were right when they said candidate Obama didn’t have enough experience to be the President of the United States. No matter what you thought of President George W. Bush, he got stuff done. We can’t say that about Obama – at least not yet.

Once again Obama uses his Weekly Address to talk about health care reform. Here’s the video, but there is no transcript available yet.

The Washington Independent has a story explaining the politics behind Obama’s wavering over the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The problem for Obama is that no amount of political maneuvering is going to get a substantial number of Republicans, if any, to support any meaningful policy he puts forward. It isn’t going to happen, so why does he keep trying?

Obama is jeopardizing his presidency for that elusive bipartisan support he seems so desperate to want but he will never attain. In the process he’s losing his base and calling into question his ability to be the president.

I just don’t think this is the change people wanted when they voted for Obama. They wanted liberalism not pacifism.

Read the Washington Independent story

Harper’s Magazine has story about this too. Scott Horton makes the case that Rham Emanuel is acting no different than Karl Rove did by pushing the Justice Department to cave in the face political pressure from the White House.

Watching the conservative echo chamber in action is a frightening experience that most people don’t have to stomach on a daily basis.

The latest misinformation parroted by the rightwing machinery is that President Obama is buying votes on health care with judicial nominations.

As usual, it all starts with just a simple question. This time the ultra-conservative Weekly Standard got the ball rolling.

Read the entire story on Examiner.com

Politico broke a scary story today. They’ve un-earthed a PowerPoint slideshow detailing the GOP strategy to use fear and mockery to stop Obama’s “socialist” agenda. It includes pictures of the president as the Joker, House Leader Nancy Pelosi as Cruella DeVille and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as Scooby Doo.

The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on “fear” of President Barack Obama and a promise to “save the country from trending toward socialism.”

The strategy was detailed in a confidential party fundraising presentation, obtained by POLITICO, which also outlines how “ego-driven” wealthy donors can be tapped with offers of access and “tchochkes.”

Read the entire story on Politico

President Obama announced today that it’s time to get health care reform done. He didn’t mention reconciliation directly, but that’s what Obama wants.

Here’s the complete transcript and video of Obama’s speech today. The video and transcript were provided by the White House.

Remarks by the President on Health Care Reform
East Room

1:50 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much, all of you, for joining us today. And I want to thank Julie, Barbara, Roland, Stephen, Renee, and Christopher, standing behind me — physicians, physicians assistants, and nurses who understand how important it is for us to make much needed changes in our health care system.

I want to thank all of you who are here today. I want to specially recognize two people who have been working tirelessly on that — on this effort, my Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius — (applause) — as well as our quarterback for health reform out of the White House, Nancy-Ann DeParle. (Applause.)

We began our push to reform health insurance last March, in this room, with doctors and nurses who know the system best. And so it’s fitting to be joined by all of you as we bring this journey to a close.

Last Thursday, I spent seven hours at a summit where Democrats and Republicans engaged in a public and very substantive discussion about health care. This meeting capped off a debate that began with a similar summit nearly one year ago. And since then, every idea has been put on the table. Every argument has been made. Everything there is to say about health care has been said — (laughter) — and just about everybody has said it. (Laughter.) So now is the time to make a decision about how to finally reform health care so that it works, not just for the insurance companies, but for America’s families and America’s businesses.

Now, where both sides say they agree is that the status quo is not working for the American people. Health insurance is becoming more expensive by the day. Families can’t afford it. Businesses can’t afford it. The federal government can’t afford it. Smaller businesses and individuals who don’t get coverage at work are squeezed especially hard. And insurance companies freely ration health care based on who’s sick and who’s healthy; who can pay and who can’t. That’s the status quo. That’s the system we have right now.

Democrats and Republicans agree that this is a serious problem for America. And we agree that if we do nothing -– if we throw up our hands and walk away -– it’s a problem that will only grow worse. Nobody disputes that. More Americans will lose their family’s health insurance if they switch jobs or lose their job. More small businesses will be forced to choose between health care and hiring. More insurance companies will deny people coverage who have preexisting conditions, or they’ll drop people’s coverage when they get sick and need it most. And the rising cost of Medicare and Medicaid will sink our government deeper and deeper and deeper into debt. On all of this we agree.
So the question is, what do we do about it?

On one end of the spectrum, there are some who’ve suggested scrapping our system of private insurance and replacing it with a government-run health care system. And though many other countries have such a system, in America it would be neither practical nor realistic.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are those, and this includes most Republicans in Congress, who believe the answer is to loosen regulations on the insurance industry — whether it’s state consumer protections or minimum standards for the kind of insurance they can sell. The argument is, is that that will somehow lower costs. I disagree with that approach. I’m concerned that this would only give the insurance industry even freer rein to raise premiums and deny care.

So I don’t believe we should give government bureaucrats or insurance company bureaucrats more control over health care in America. I believe it’s time to give the American people more control over their health care and their health insurance. I don’t believe we can afford to leave life-and-death decisions about health care to the discretion of insurance company executives alone. I believe that doctors and nurses and physician assistants like the ones in this room should be free to decide what’s best for their patients. (Applause.)

Now, the proposal I put forward gives Americans more control over their health insurance and their health care by holding insurance companies more accountable. It builds on the current system where most Americans get their health insurance from their employer. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. I can tell you as the father of two young girls, I would not want any plan that interferes with the relationship between a family and their doctor.

Essentially, my proposal would change three things about the current health care system. First, it would end the worst practices of insurance companies. No longer would they be able to deny your coverage because of a preexisting condition. No longer would they be able to drop your coverage because you got sick. No longer would they be able to force you to pay unlimited amounts of money out of your own pocket. No longer would they be able to arbitrarily and massively raise premiums like Anthem Blue Cross recently tried to do in California — up to 39 percent increases in one year in the individual market. Those practices would end.

Second, my proposal would give uninsured individuals and small business owners the same kind of choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves — because if it’s good enough for members of Congress, it’s good enough for the people who pay their salaries. (Applause.)

The reason federal employees get a good deal on health insurance is that we all participate in an insurance market where insurance companies give better coverage and better rates, because they get more customers. It’s an idea that many Republicans have embraced in the past, before politics intruded.
And my proposal says that if you still can’t afford the insurance in this new marketplace, even though it’s going to provide better deals for people than they can get right now in the individual marketplace, then we’ll offer you tax credits to do so — tax credits that add up to the largest middle-class tax cut for health care in history. After all, the wealthiest among us can already buy the best insurance there is, and the least well off are able to get coverage through Medicaid. So it’s the middle class that gets squeezed, and that’s who we have to help.
Now, it is absolutely true that all of this will cost some money — about $100 billion per year. But most of this comes from the nearly $2 trillion a year that America already spends on health care — but a lot of it is not spent wisely. A lot of that money is being wasted or spent badly. So within this plan, we’re going to make sure the dollars we spend go towards making insurance more affordable and more secure. We’re going to eliminate wasteful taxpayer subsidies that currently go to insurance and pharmaceutical companies; set a new fee on insurance companies that stand to gain a lot of money and a lot of profits as millions of Americans are able to buy insurance; and we’re going to make sure that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share on Medicare.

The bottom line is our proposal is paid for. And all the new money generated in this plan goes back to small businesses and middle-class families who can’t afford health insurance. It would also lower prescription drug prices for seniors. And it would help train new doctors and nurses and physician assistants to provide care for American families.

Finally, my proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions — families, businesses, and the federal government. We have now incorporated most of the serious ideas from across the political spectrum about how to contain the rising cost of health care — ideas that go after the waste and abuse in our system, especially in programs like Medicare. But we do this while protecting Medicare benefits, and extending the financial stability of the program by nearly a decade.

Our cost-cutting measures mirror most of the proposals in the current Senate bill, which reduces most people’s premiums and brings down our deficit by up to a trillion dollars over the next two decades — brings down our deficit. Those aren’t my numbers; those are the savings determined by the Congressional Budget Office, which is the Washington acronym for the nonpartisan, independent referee of Congress in terms of how much stuff costs. (Laughter.)

So that’s our proposal. This is where we’ve ended up. It’s an approach that has been debated and changed and I believe improved over the last year. It incorporates the best ideas from Democrats and Republicans — including some of the ideas that Republicans offered during the health care summit, like funding state grants on medical malpractice reform, and curbing waste and fraud and abuse in the health care system. My proposal also gets rid of many of the provisions that had no place in health care reform — provisions that were more about winning individual votes in Congress than improving health care for all Americans.

Now, despite all that we agree on and all the Republican ideas we’ve incorporated, many — probably most — Republicans in Congress just have a fundamental disagreement over whether we should have more or less oversight of insurance companies. And if they truly believe that less regulation would lead to higher quality, more affordable health insurance, then they should vote against the proposal I’ve put forward.

Now, some also believe that we should, instead of doing what I’m proposing, pursue a piecemeal approach to health insurance reform, where we tinker around the edges of this challenge for the next few years. Even those who acknowledge the problem of the uninsured say we just can’t afford to help them right now — which is why the Republican proposal only covers 3 million uninsured Americans while we cover over 31 million.

The problem with that approach is that unless everyone has access to affordable coverage, you can’t prevent insurance companies from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions; you can’t limit the amount families are forced to pay out of their own pockets. The insurance reforms rest on everybody having access to coverage. And you also don’t do anything about the fact that taxpayers currently end up subsidizing the uninsured when they’re forced to go to the emergency room for care, to the tune of about a thousand bucks per family. You can’t get those savings if those people are still going to the emergency room. So the fact is, health reform only works if you take care of all of these problems at once.

Now, both during and after last week’s summit, Republicans in Congress insisted that the only acceptable course on health care reform is to start over. But given these honest and substantial differences between the parties about the need to regulate the insurance industry and the need to help millions of middle-class families get insurance, I don’t see how another year of negotiations would help.

Moreover, the insurance companies aren’t starting over. They’re continuing to raise premiums and deny coverage as we speak. For us to start over now could simply lead to delay that could last for another decade, or even more. The American people, and the U.S. economy, just can’t wait that long. So, no matter which approach you favor, I believe the United States Congress owes the American people a final vote on health care reform. (Applause.)

We have debated this issue thoroughly, not just for the past year but for decades. Reform has already passed the House with a majority. It has already passed the Senate with a supermajority of 60 votes. And now it deserves the same kind of up or down vote that was cast on welfare reform, that was cast on the Children’s Health Insurance Program, that was used for COBRA health coverage for the unemployed, and, by the way, for both Bush tax cuts — all of which had to pass Congress with nothing more than a simple majority.

I, therefore, ask leaders in both houses of Congress to finish their work and schedule a vote in the next few weeks. From now until then, I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform. (Applause.) And I urge every American who wants this reform to make their voice heard as well — every family, every business, every patient, every doctor, every nurse, every physician’s assistant. Make your voice heard.

This has been a long and wrenching debate. It has stoked great passions among the American people and their representatives. And that’s because health care is a difficult issue. It is a complicated issue. If it was easy, it would have been solved long ago. As all of you know from experience, health care can literally be an issue of life or death. And as a result, it easily lends itself to demagoguery and political gamesmanship, and misrepresentation and misunderstanding.

But that’s not an excuse for those of us who were sent here to lead. That’s not an excuse for us to walk away. We can’t just give up because the politics are hard. I know there’s been a fascination, bordering on obsession, in this media town about what passing health insurance reform would mean for the next election and the one after that. How will this play? What will happen with the polls? I will leave it to others to sift through the politics, because that’s not what this is about. That’s not why we’re here.

This is about what reform would mean for the mother with breast cancer whose insurance company will finally have to pay for her chemotherapy. This is about what reform would mean for the small business owner who will no longer have to choose between hiring more workers or offering coverage to the employees she has. This is about what reform would mean for middle-class families who will be able to afford health insurance for the very first time in their lives and get a regular checkup once in a while, and have some security about their children if they get sick.

This is about what reform would mean for all those men and women I’ve met over the last few years who’ve been brave enough to share their stories. When we started our push for reform last year, I talked to a young mother in Wisconsin named Laura Klitzka. She has two young children. She thought she had beaten her breast cancer but then later discovered it had spread to her bones. She and her husband were working and had insurance, but their medical bills still landed them in debt. And now she spends time worrying about that debt when all she wants to do is spend time with her children and focus on getting well.

This should not happen in the United States of America. And it doesn’t have to. (Applause.)

In the end, that’s what this debate is about. It’s about what kind of country we want to be. It’s about the millions of lives that would be touched and, in some cases, saved by making private health insurance more secure and more affordable.

So at stake right now is not just our ability to solve this problem, but our ability to solve any problem. The American people want to know if it’s still possible for Washington to look out for their interests and their future. They are waiting for us to act. They are waiting for us to lead. And as long as I hold this office, I intend to provide that leadership. I do not know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right. (Applause.) And so I ask Congress to finish its work, and I look forward to signing this reform into law.

Thank you very much, everybody. Let’s get it done. (Applause.)

END
2:09 P.M. EST

President Obama appears to have finally realized that Republicans will never support any effort to reform health care. On Wed., Obama is expected to release a plan to pass health care reform. According to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, the president would like Republicans to not filibuster the bill in the Senate and allow a simple up-or-down vote, but that’s not going to happen.

Now Republicans know they have lost this battle and they’re freaking out. One can only hope there’s a special place in hell for these so-called Christians who lie through their teeth.

Here’s the complete video of Barack Obama’s inauguration and speech. It seems like such a long time ago. Remember? Hope and change. It was an exciting time, wasn’t it?