in case there is anyone still under the illusion that Barack Obama is the least bit moderate, there is this story in the Huffington Post about the President’s attempt to shore up his left flank with the “progressives”* in the House. His promise to the left wing is that whatever version of health care reform passes right now, will be the foundation for much more to come later:
Obama argued to the group of progressive members that his health care reform bill should be looked at as the foundation of reform, that can be built on in the future. He asked them to help gather votes for the final health care battle and promised that as soon as the bill was signed into law, he’d continue to push to make it stronger. But in a matter of weeks, he stressed, he could sign into law legislation that would lead to 31 million new people being insured, including the woman who wrote him.
The fight now is in the House of Representatives. If they pass the Senate version of Health Care Reform then the President will have his “foundation”.
Here is how Jeffrey Anderson puts it:
Nevertheless, the Obama administration (itself fast becoming the truest enemy of the House) wants the House to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare, hand it over to the president to sign into law, and then trust that the Senate will then — and only then — begin to fix some of the parts of the bill to which the House most strongly objects. Oh, and the Senate would do so using a “budget reconciliation” process that Americans strongly oppose, and would do so even though it would then be making the bill look more like what the House wanted and less like what the Senate wanted. Meanwhile, the administration would have lost all interest and would therefore be putting no pressure on the Senate to act, because it would then already have its coveted comprehensive bill in hand.
Surely Congress people can figure this out.
*by the way, to learn more about “progressives” from their own history, please get the book. You must get it. All (ok, maybe not all, but most) of Glenn Beck’s material came from this book: