The Note: Curve Ball -- Another Week, Another Set of Obstacles to Health Care Reform

July 17, 2009 8:20 AM

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports:

On the vice president’s advice, we’re taking a look around -- and it’s spinning.

We’re seeing sticker shock spread through the Capitol. We’re seeing Democrats fight with each other. We’re seeing middle-of-the-night committee votes. We’re seeing the unemployment rate rising. We’re seeing a presidential approval rate falling.

We’re seeing a story that just is not meant to be covered hour by hour examined in every ugly detail.

President Obama always wanted to connect health care reform to the economy. He’s gotten that wish, but not quite in the way he envisioned.

If there’s going to be a heavier touch, now might be a nice time to apply it. The president still has the capacity to make some order out of the chaos on the Hill, and just may be able to carry something through, now that it’s clear that nothing is going to carry itself.

Things are still moving. Yet August has never looked so close -- yes, Mr. President, it’s getting hot in here -- while its goals have never looked so far away. (And how many more lost weeks can the president afford?)

Watching those trend lines: “Democratic momentum is slowing but not yet reversing,” Charlie Cook writes in his National Journal column. “What Republicans should hope for, and Democrats should fear, is that we are nearing an inflection point, when the directions change. That hasn't happened yet. The key indicator to watch for the rest of the summer is public confidence in Obama.”

The Senate Finance Committee ended talks Thursday night with leaders there saying there would be no agreement this week. An overnight House Ways and Means Committee session did produce a bill (with three Democrats on the panel voting no) -- but it, like the Senate HELP measure, cannot and will not pass the full Congress.

Watching those numbers: “Congress's chief budget analyst delivered a devastating assessment yesterday of the health-care proposals drafted by congressional Democrats, fueling an insurrection among fiscal conservatives in the House and pushing negotiators in the Senate to redouble efforts to draw up a new plan that more effectively restrains federal spending,” Lori Montgomery and Shailagh Murray write in The Washington Post.

“One of the main arguments made by the President and others for investing in health reform now is that it will save the federal government money in the long run by containing costs,” ABC’s Z. Byron Wolf reports. “Turns out that may not be the case.”

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf: “The curve is being raised.”

Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark.: “There's no way they can pass this bill on the House floor. Not even close.”

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine: “We shouldn't be restrained by an artificially compressed timeline.”

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.: “Basically, the president is not helping us,” since he opposes the concept of taxing health benefits.

(And look what’s back in the stump speech: “First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan.  Nobody is talking about taking that away from you,” the president said in New Jersey Thursday, per ABC’s Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller.)

White House spokesman Bill Burton: “There are obviously bumps along the way getting final passage of the legislation in both the House and the Senate. We have been able to make a lot of progress and those comments notwithstanding, this week has been a great week.”

But it was a non-member of Congress who has the loudest voice at this moment in the debate: “The sobering assessment from Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf came as House Democrats pushed to pass a partisan bill through committees, while in the Senate a small group of lawmakers continued to seek a deal that could win support from both political parties,” the AP’s Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports.

“The CBO assessment quickly reverberated around Capitol Hill, where House and Senate Democratic leaders are struggling to secure votes to advance health legislation before a scheduled break in August,” Greg Hitt writes in The Wall Street Journal. “The testimony undercuts one of Mr. Obama's central arguments: that the initiative will control long-term costs for the government as well as ordinary Americans and businesses.”

More of an uppercut than an undercut: “It’s a waste of money to have Democrats running ads against Democrats,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said of the Organizing for America ads that press Democrats on health care, per ABC’s Jonathan Karl.

(“Senator Reid was led to believe by the question posed to him that the DNC was attacking members of his Caucus,” said Reid spokesman Rodell Mollineau.)

It’s OFA’s “first big splash” of the Obama presidency, Jill Lawrence writes for Politics Daily. Said executive director Mitch Stewart: “Our mission is to support the president's agenda.”

Mark Leibovich of The New York Times reports on the booming, missing voice: “[Sen. Ted] Kennedy’s office says the senator is in touch with his staff and monitoring the progress of health care legislation by phone and C-Span. ‘He’s doing well, continuing to balance his treatment with his work,” said Mr. Kennedy’s spokeswoman, Melissa Wagoner.’ ”

“But conversations with friends and colleagues about Mr. Kennedy’s condition now typically include a weary acceptance of the inevitable: that his cancer -- whose survival time for people similarly afflicted is typically measured in months, not years, from diagnosis -- is taking a mounting toll,” Leibovich said.

On that other front: “The debate over the effectiveness of the government's massive stimulus act hit a fever pitch yesterday, as Vice President Biden took the White House message straight to the district of Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), a leading critic of the president's economic policies,” The Washington Post’s Michael D. Shear and Alexi Mostrous report.

The line that may launch a dozen or so campaign ads: “To those who say that our economic decisions haven't saved jobs, it simply hasn't worked, I say, ‘Look around you,’ ” the vice president said.

What else he’s literally saying: “Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’ ” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”

Attention, goalpost watchers: “Turns out the $787 billion ‘American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’ (AARA) was not designed for full economic recovery, but rather to ‘stabilize’ the downturn. That's the word from White House officials today, who held off-camera briefings with reporters on how the AARA is working so far,” per ABC’s Yunji de Nies.

Among the obstacles: “You've never seen the president or vice president go out there and say, 'We're shooting for less worse, and damn it, we're there,' " Jared Bernstein, Biden’s chief economic adviser, told reporters, per the Los Angeles Times’ Peter Nicholas.

Bloomberg headline you don’t have to be an economist not to like: “Obama Stimulus Fails to Reboot Economy as No Multiplier Effect.”

Think Biden is welcome back in Richmond? Eric Cantor took a look around: “Since the stimulus bill passed and was signed into law, unemployment is up in Richmond, up in Virginia and up across this country.”

And wait -- was there something going on in the Judiciary Committee this week? (Anyone else miss Biden and his Princeton hat?)

Even Frank Ricci himself couldn’t change the calculus: “Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is on track for an early August confirmation vote, following four days of testimony that won her praise from even some of the Senate Judiciary Committee's more conservative members,” Kathy Kiely and Joan Biskupic report for USA Today.

“The lead Republican on the panel, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, commended Sotomayor on Thursday for her humor and ‘direct’ manner and said he has no plans to block a vote on her nomination in the full Senate.”

“Outnumbered, often-frustrated Republicans launched what's likely to be a futile, last-ditch effort Thursday to heighten doubts about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's judicial temperament, grilling her hard on a key affirmative-action case, gun rights and other volatile issues,” McClatchy’s David Lightman reports.

Your upshot: “Lacking the votes to block Sonia Sotomayor from the Supreme Court, Republicans established lines in the sand for challenging any future nominee for the high court and tried to limit President Barack Obama's hand if he gets another opportunity to pick a nominee,” the AP’s Tom Raum reports.

“I think she’s been very steady but confusing in her testimony,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Thursday on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line.” “I think the biggest conundrum that I have, and I think other members have, is how do you reconcile the two Sonia Sotomayors.”

Opportunity lost, says the Washington Examiner’s Byron York: “For Republicans, the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor were a missed opportunity. Not an opportunity to defeat her -- with 60 Senate Democrats determined to confirm President Barack Obama’s first Supreme Court choice, Sotomayor will undoubtedly prevail. But Republicans had a chance to delve deeply into Sotomayor’s record, to reveal the worldview and background of the next Supreme Court justice, and they didn’t take advantage of it.”

A big night in New York: “President Obama, in a rousing address to the NAACP Thursday night, paid tribute to the civil rights pioneers who made his historic presidency possible and declared the legacy of discrimination ‘must not stand,’ ” the New York Daily News’ Michael Saul writes. 

“No one has written your destiny for you,” the president said, directing his remarks to “all the other Barack Obamas out there” who might one day grow up to be president, per The New York Times’ Sheryl Gay Stolberg. “Your destiny is in your hands, and don’t you forget that. That’s what we have to teach all of our children! No excuses! No excuses!”

Tough day ahead in Alexandria: “The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a $2 million check in return for the group’s endorsement in a bitter legislative dispute, then flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay,” Politico’s Mike Allen reports.

“In return for the $2 million, ACU offered a range of services that included: ‘Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and / or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)’ The conservative group’s remarkable demand -- black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as ‘pay for play’ -- was contained in a private letter to FedEx that was provided to POLITICO.”

Cue the left: “The U.S. may not be able to move all eligible detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to other countries before President Barack Obama’s January deadline for closing the prison, an Obama administration official said,” Bloomberg’s Janine Zacharia and Justin Blum report. “The effort to resettle prisoners has been hampered by legislation that bars their release in the U.S. through Sept. 30, said the official.”

The drumbeat starts again on Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., as reporters probe his state travel records: “The records detail more than $468,000 worth of state-funded travel for Sanford and show that he routinely billed taxpayers for high-end airline seats, racking up more than $44,000 on business- and first-class tickets. He often stayed in pricey hotels that far exceeded the rates he imposed on other state employees,” Politico’s Kenneth P. Vogel reports. “On one overseas trip, the state appears to have spent more than $12,000 for the GOP governor’s business-class tickets for a September 2007 trade mission to China, while his aides flew in economy class for airfares as low as $1,900.”

More from the curse of C St. SE: “The estranged wife of former Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering alleges in a lawsuit that his ongoing affair with a former college sweetheart damaged their marriage and led him to give up his political life,” Jimmie E. Gates reports for the Clarion Ledger.

David Brooks likes the Obama colleges proposal: “It’s a reminder that the Obama administration can produce hope and change -- when the White House is the engine of policy creation and not the caboose.”

The Kicker:

“What he should do is maybe run for Congress.” -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, offering one path toward replacing CBO Director Doug Elmendorf.

“The DNC cheated.” -- White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton, having some fun with his friends in the wake of the party’s 18-17 softball victory over the White House troops, per Politico’s Amie Parnes.

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