A week ago President Obama grabbed his final quiver of arrows and started firing the final efforts to save health care reform. His first effort was a speech to a joint session of Congress.
After a month of highly attended and vocal town halls where it became apparent that many Americans knew more about Congress’ plans than the members of Congress did, it was anticipated that President Obama’s speech would reset the health care discussion. It was hoped that President Obama might have the wisdom to publicly discard parts that had drawn clear public enmity, such as the public option and offer policies that could be supported on both sides of the aisle like opening insurance sales across state lines. The President did neither. Rather, the President dug his heels in for support of a public option, called those who opposed the legislation liars and proceeded to refrain several assertions that had been proven not to be true.
Expectations were high that President Obama’s speech would stop the slide of public support and regain support for his health care reform initiative. At first, it appeared that he accomplished his goal.
Hovering around its lowest level of public support just prior to Obama’s speech, in the week following the speech, Rasmussen recorded steady rebounds of support for Obama’s health care reform. Along with it, Obama’s personal approval level which had been hovering around all time lows, also rebounded. Ah, once again there was hope for change for Obama worshippers. Unfortunately, the hope was short lived.
Yesterday showed the first crack in the Obama magic. Rasmussen reported that the rebound in public support for health care reform had stopped and had slid back a bit. Today, support for the health plan dropped below the levels that were seen immediately before Obama’s speech. Coincidentally, Obama’s approval level is also dropping.
Compounding Obama’s attempt to save health reform is a tangent but highly relevant story; the investigative reporting showing ACORN in need of a visit from the RICO agents.
As the townhalls were filling with anti big government folks in the first half of August, Obama called on ACORN to help balance the attendance. While their tactics were suspect, there is no doubt that they balanced at least the volume if not the substance, of the meetings. With the revelations of the past week, government contacts are showing ACORN more undersides of buses than a repairman in a Greyhound garage. After having bragged about his strong connections with ACORN, President Obama will need to keep a wide berth of this group until the heat dies down, which I don’t expect to happen anytime soon. Thus, for the time being, there will be far less public displays of affection for Obamacare.
With the House bill apparently unable to find a combination of Democrats that can get it passed, some Senate Democrats are trying to cobble a plan that could pass out of the Senate and give the House some cover. One of those attempts was unveiled today by Max Baucus. I’ll let others give you the detail of the plan. Suffice it to say that it is missing the mark on all counts. In fact, where it took several weeks for opposition to gather on the House bill, the Baucus bill hadn’t even had it’s first news conference before opposition formed:
AFSCME President McEntee: “Finance Committee Health Care Bill is Deeply Flawed” (Press Release, September 16, 2009)
Teamsters Oppose Baucus Plan to Tax Health Insurance Companies (Press Release, September 16, 2009)
AFL-CIO: Baucus bill ‘absolutely fails’ (The Hill, September 16, 2009)
HCAN calls bill a “failure” (Politico)
Unfortunately, for President Obama, the opposition this time was coming from within his own ranks. Add to this reports that there are enough people unhappy for a variety of reasons, that there may not be enough votes to even pass Baucus’ bill out of his own committee and it leaves just one question; whatever happened to hope and change?
