Obama To Dems: Don't Screw Up This Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity

[seeinfweggos]

Source: Talking Points Memo

With the public option dead, and likely not coming back to life, President Obama huddled with Senate Democrats at the White House today bringing a familiar message: "get this done."

....

"Today was a very frank articulation of what's at stake for the country, and what's at stake for us, that we're not going to get a chance like this for a long, long time," Casey told reporters, "maybe not in our lifetimes."

...

I asked her whether any in the party were concerned that, with the public option dropped, the Senate bill and the House bill are now so different as to be unreconcilable. She hinted that discussions have been taking place in the background to keep the conference process smooth.

"People have been talking about that for a long time," she (Sen. debbie stabenow) said.


Read more: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/obama-to-dems-dont-screw-up-this-once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity-1.php?ref=fpa

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edited to clarify stabenow quote

[AnOhioan]

1. Yeah....woulda been nice if he had said that prior to letting the

bill be sacrificed on the altar of Joe.

[tblue]

2. Maybe he should tell that to the Conservatives for a change!

Why are the Progressives always the ones who have to give in? No deal! Enough!!!

[IndianaGreen]

3. Obama wants his photo up signing bill before Xmas, and we get frakked

I don't think so, Barack. Kill this bill!

[groundloop]

7. The bill still has to go through the conference committee, won't happen this year

That oughta' be fun, watching the House and Senate duke it out. Maybe there's a slim chance that some meat can make it into the combined bill.

[MNDemNY]

11. Nope kill it now.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TheMadMonk]

24. The problem isn't Obama. The problem is the men who on Jan. 20...

...got in his ear and said: "If you want to see your daughter's grow up...."

[FiveGoodMen]

28. That is a possibility

But either way we're completely helpless and completely screwed.

[Kansas Wyatt]

45. Bullshit!

Obama KNEW the threat when he ran.
It does not relieve him from his promises and his oath.
Fucking cowardice, as HIS failure and sabotage will hurt and kill so many.

[Xicano]

40. +10

.

[MNDemNY]

5. Alredy have. Kill the bill.

[Botany]

6. From Shred's 8:19 AM post

*NO Single payer
*NO public option
*NO expansion of Medicare coverage
*NO cost controls
*NO re-importation of drugs
*NO negotiating for lower drug prices
*Capped coverage for expensive care
*Mandatory purchasing of private insurance

not unless they plan to change things @ mark up w/ the House this bill stinks on ice.

[MNDemNY]

8. The insurance industry profits MUST be protected!!!

[Botany]

9. The very people who cause the problems get to profit from the ....

.... outcome.

[MNDemNY]

10. sounds familiar!

[FiveGoodMen]

41. That's one serious knife we've all got in our backs!

[strawberry44]

12. Obama is only interested in

getting "any bill" passed so he'll look good in the history books as the first president to get health care reform passed - even if it is useless. That is the wrong attitude and I am so disappointed in him. I'm sorry I voted for him and won't vote for him in 2012.

[Iowa]

25. Yep. 9 devastating years of Bush/Cheney/Obama are behind us. Only 3 more to go.

Maybe we can elect a genuine Democrat in 2012. Obama is nothing but a corporate whore... a Republican Trojan horse. He is the worst Democratic president in history - hands down.

[RBInMaine]

13. Anyone who says "kill the bill" has zero sense of political reality. ZERO !

Ok folks, reality check time. First, a majority of the NATION has made clear in poll upon poll that they do not want an entire remake of the healthcare system, at least not yet. Most people have employer based insurance, and they like it. What they want is lower rates. Plain and simple. Better to start with insurance reform and efforts to bend the cost curve than to just say "do nothing." Because even insurance reform is SOMETHING. It is still a start. Hey, if I had my will I'd have single payer. But the national majorty doesn't want it. Even Kucinich admits that. The Senate rules are what they are. You do the possible, not the nothing. That is political reality 101. Get a bill passed, give it a chance, and then adjust later.

[grahamhgreen]

16. You don't need a bill. You can expand Medicare in reconcilliation. Done. Next?

[Botany]

18. 70% of Americans want some form of public option and almost 80% want ....

health care reform.

Making this pile of steaming dung law will codify a for profit health care system that puts
profits over people ..... BTW there is nothing in the current bill that will lower and or cap
rates.

[sofa king]

19. Killing it means we can't sneak in a public option in conference.

Which is what I would be planning on doing if I were a Senate Democrat.

[lapfog_1]

22. Tell me whats in the bill that's so great?

No more pre-existing conditions? No lifetime cap on payouts (but there is an annual cap, and if you go over the cap, you go bankrupt and/or die... so maybe it is a "lifetime" cap after all).

Mandatory purchase... which is only partially subsidized. This is a huge giveaway to the insurance industry AND a tax on the middle class / poor.

Bend the curve? How exactly?

Where is the reform?

[BlueIdaho]

23. Bless your heart

You still think we're playing some kind of six dimensional chess and the Obama is Spock.

There will be no eleventh hour super-magical cosmic akido.

We're fucked and so is health care legislation.

[Iowa]

26. +1

[Aleric]

33. +1

[mbperrin]

27. Nope. We were going to fix the Patriot Act later. Didn't happen.

The huge majority of the public favors single payer.

Samplehttp://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/06/public-opinion-strongly-favors-public-plan.php

Public Opinion Strongly Favors Public Plan
New NYT poll confirms earlier polling that indicated overwhelming public support for a government-run insurance option:

72% of all respondents favor it.

50% of REPUBLICANS support it.
87% of Democrats support it.
73% of Independents support it.

This is my single voting issue for 2010. Anyone who didn't propose, support and defend single payer gets no money and no vote. ANYONE who favors it, supports and defends it get money and votes.

That's it. Politicians can bend to the will of the public or the insurance companies. If the insurance companies, they are dead to me. Period. No exceptions, no mealy mouth.

[TheWatcher]

32. So you are basically telling me I am living in a Corporatist State with a majority of the population

that is so dumbed down, brainwashed, and bobble-headingly compromised that they actually WANT what is not in their best interests.

Maybe Huxley WAS a Prophet After all:

“If you can get people to assent to the state of affairs in which they are living, the state of servitude,… it seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this—that we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy, who have always existed and presumably always will exist, to get people actually to love their servitude. People can be made to enjoy a state of affairs which by any decent standard they ought not to enjoy. And these methods, I think, are a real refinement on the older methods of terror, because they combine methods of terror with methods of acceptance. Among the various other methods which one can think of, there is, for example, the pharmacological method,… and the result would be that you can imagine a euphoric which would make people thoroughly happy even in the most abominable circumstances. I mean these things are possible!”

-Aldous Huxley March 20, 1962 U.C. Berkely

[Hippo_Tron]

42. Absolutely, this much has been apparent since Ronald Reagan was elected

A large chunk of working class people vote against their own best interests. When you have a country where that happens, it's extremely difficult to pass anything that favors the working class. Those tea-baggers protesting this stuff from the right (although they certainly aren't a majority) are not millionaires or even upper middle class.

[groundloop]

14. I keep thinking Reid should have let trator Joe read from the phone book,

with his Repuke friends for a couple of weeks. He should have forced their hand, let the news show the country what the Party of NO is all about.

[seeinfweggos]

17. that is EXACTLY what i think. it wouldn't even be changing senate rules, enforcing them, actually

[grahamhgreen]

15. HE SCREWED IT UP! AND it's not once in a lifetime. It's time to do it properly.

[BlueIdaho]

20. I have no interest in republican Joe Lieberman's health care legislation.

and President Obama needs to schedule a special TV address to the American people to apologize for fucking this thing up so badly.

[emilyg]

21. I'm so mad - I don't even care to hear from him.

[SoapBox]

29. ...it's a little late to now find a spine, Prez O...

...day late and dollar short on standing up and really taking command on the healthcare thing...I know that you had a "concept" to let congress "figure it out" BUT, as you should have been able to see, the bozos couldn't punch their way out of a wet bag.

I think I have lost interest in you President Traveling the World.

[Jefferson23]

30. WHO is Obama referring to when he said, don't screw this up?

Where was he from the beginning, did he brow beat and threaten the Blue Dogs and Lieberman at all? Appears as though he had no problem getting what he wanted when he wanted and believed it was a priority.

White House Browbeats Dem Freshmen On War Money: "You'll Never Hear From Us Again"
digg Share this on Facebook Huffpost - White House Browbeats Dem Freshmen On War Money: "You'll Never Hear From Us Again"

First Posted: 06-12-09



he White House is playing hardball with Democrats who intend to vote against the supplemental war spending bill, threatening freshmen who oppose it that they won't get help with reelection and will be cut off from the White House, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) said Friday.

"We're not going to help you. You'll never hear from us again," Woolsey said the White House is telling freshmen. She wouldn't say who is issuing the threats, and the White House didn't immediately return a call.

Woolsey said she herself had not been pressured because the White House and leadership know she's a firm no vote. But she had heard from other members about the White House pressure.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/12/white-house-browbeats-dem_n_214870.html

[Justitia]

31. JFC, it's a shit sandwich! Either turn it the fuck around or dump it, already. -eom

[Lasher]

34. So now he huddles with Senate Democrats.

All this time he's been so worried about what Republicans think, why doesn't he huddle with them?

[New Dawn]

35. It is only a "once in a life time opportunity" to get screwed by the "health insurance" industry.

Once the fascist "Individual Mandate" has been put into practice (forcing us to buy low-coverage "health insurance" from private companies), the "health insurance" conglomerates will massively jack up their prices. Anyone who refuses to get "insurance" will be heavily fined by the IRS. Anyone who refuses (or is unable) to pay the fine will be sent to the notoriously abusive US prison system. The US already has the largest prison population in the world (5% of the world's population, but 25% of its prisoners).

[WriteDown]

36. Once in a lifetime opportunity to do what exactly?

Mandate insurance with no public option? Wouldn't want to miss the chance to do that. :sarcasm:

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[seeinfweggos]

38. i'm sure you worked really hard to elect him

did you even vote for him?

[freddie mertz]

39. I did. Wish I'd kept the receipt.nt.

[WeDidIt]

43. WeDidIt to Obama: To late, you already did. n/t

[EFerrari]

44. "Tell me sweet little lies"