From The Times
March 4, 2010
Barack Obama: I'll steamroll health reforms through Congress

Tim Reid, Washington


(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

President Obama indicated that he could not continue to compromise forever visited President Obama declared for the first time yesterday that he was prepared to steamroller his troubled health reform legislation through Congress with only Democratic support; a move Republicans denounced as the “nuclear option”.

Signalling that his patience had snapped after a year-long fight, Mr Obama laid the ground for Democrats in Congress to muscle the Bill through using a high-risk legislative manoeuvre known as reconciliation, which overrides a Republican filibuster. Although he did not use the word “reconciliation”, Mr Obama made it clear that that was the route he intended to take.

Democrats will, as a result, be able to get the health reform package through the Senate with a simple majority. Mr Obama’s party ceded their 60-stong majority in the upper chamber after losing the late Teddy Kennedy’s Massachusetts seat in January.

That shock defeat was due, in large part, to growing public hostility to Mr Obama’s health reforms, which many see as too expensive at a time of soaring deficits. Ramming the Bill through Congress is, therefore, a high-risk strategy that Republicans vowed to exploit.

In a speech at the White House, Mr Obama acknowledged the risks involved. “I don’t know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right,” he said. “The American people are waiting for us to lead. As long as I hold this office, I intend to provide that leadership.”

Mr Obama rejected Republican calls to start drafting new legislation. “For us to start over now could simply lead to delay that could last another decade or even more. I have asked leaders in both houses of Congress to finish their work and schedule a vote in the next few weeks.”

The push for a swift end to the bruising battle was carefully choreographed by the White House after Mr Obama’s “bipartisan” healthcare summit with congressional Republicans last week. He used that encounter to place four Republican ideas into his final health reform package. That enabled him to say that he was reaching out to the opposition, at a time when Democrats are, in fact, preparing to shut them out of the process altogether.

Eric Cantor, the No 2 Republican in the House, said: “If the President simply adds a couple of Republican solutions to a trillion-dollar healthcare package, it isn’t bipartisanship. It’s political cover.”

Both parties have used reconciliation more than 20 times each since 1980 — but never to pass a piece of legislation as expensive and as sweeping as Mr Obama’s health reforms.