This story was reported for the San Diego News Network on February 24, 2010.
Thursday’s meeting between President Barack Obama and congressional leaders may just be another addition to daytime television rather than a boost to health care reform legislation.
With Obama’s health care reform package seeing major alterations in the past year and the 59 Democratic members of Congress falling one vote short of stopping a GOP filibuster, legislation to revamp the controversial system in a liberal manner may just be a broken promise.
Why? Two political consultants offer two different reasons.
Democratic political consultant Chris Crotty said Obama’s political party created the mess itself when trying to appease Congressional “centrists.”
Republican political consultant Matt Klink said it’s simply clear that Obama’s health care reform package, no matter the number of changes it’s gone through, isn’t wanted in the U.S.
It has been almost a year since Obama first introduced his first health care reform plan. After 2,000 pages of proposed legislation filtering through Congress and questionable hope as to the fate of the plan, Obama offered another plan Monday, only 11 pages in length.
Thursday’s meeting may result in even more changes to Obama’s plan.
Crotty — a political consultant to various Democratic politicians who also worked on Obama’s presidential campaign – said Democrats could’ve predicted the problem.
“It’s really unfortunate because the Democrats have done this to themselves,” he said.
Crotty said the foundation of today’s predicament is the result of the 2006 congressional elections when the House saw a win of 30 Democratic seats. He said when former Rep. Rahm Emanuel “combed” the country in search of candidates who could win congressional seats and labeled themselves as “Democrats” when they weren’t and still aren’t. At the time, such a move was easy, said Crotty, “because they didn’t want to be tied at the hip with George W. Bush who had a 29 percent approval rating.”
The result of the election of “centrist Democrats” rather than “actual Democrats,” said Crotty, is why 39 House Democrats rejected Obama’s health care reform agenda in November.
Additionally, Democrats don’t want to present their package to Congress and risk the chance of a Republican filibuster because they’ll “look silly.”
Crotty said Democrats will attempt to pass any “type of health care reform” and label it as such to keep party momentum high without appearing to the general public that they have failed.
“One of the reasons Republicans can oppose health care reform without proposing an alternative is because they know the disarray in the Democrats,” Crotty said. “They know the Democrats will look silly and that Democrats are more afraid of looking stupid than they are about passing health care reform.”
But Matt Klink, a Republican political consultant, said the current failure of health care reform is simple: the plan itself is flawed .
“The attempt for a compromise is impossible,” Klink said. “Right now, this is a concern for Democrats and they need to pass some type of health care reform because they made such a big deal about it.”
Klink said although he is unsure when a plan will pass, when it does, it will be “a smaller package and not everyone will be satisfied.”
Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) said the reason why Republicans are rejecting the Democratic proposal is because it doesn’t focus on reducing costs of current health care programs before expanding health care coverage. Additionally, he said if Tort reform or a revamp of legal remedies, were included in Obama’s proposal, it would appeal more to Republicans.
“We still haven’t included Tort reform, the President talks about it but there is no inclusion of true Tort reform in his bill,” Bilbray said.
The compromises between Republicans and Democrats are still unknown but Bilbray made it clear that one thing is missing from the health care equation, “the American People.”
“We need to ask what the American people will agree with,” he said. “That is a component that is missing in the formula.”
Hoa Quach is the political editor for the San Diego News Network.