Obama Gets Defensive On Health Care: “Every Single Criteria For Reform…Is In This Bill”

President Obama jumped to the defense of the Senate health care legislation now primed for approval, dismissing talk that the final product is only a “compromise” that took precedence over true reforms and insisting that his goals have been met in the bill currently before the Senate.

In an interview with the Washington Post on Tuesday the president made his most impassioned and emotional public arguments for the Senate health bill and took on liberal critics who have complained that the Senate deal is too weak and should be defeated and sent back for retooling. Obama said the bill meets “every single criteria for reform” and that he is “enthusiastic” about the specifics of the legislation.

Tuesday’s remarks were another piece of the effort made by the White House, perhaps unwise given the public’s views on the reform bill,  to show Americans that the president is deeply involved with the work on health care and that the final product poised to emerge from the Senate is a bill that matches the promises he made both on the campaign trail in 2008 and throughout this year as the fight over reform raged.

Also high on the priority list for the president and the White House is soothing angered liberals like Howard Dean who have suddenly turned on the health care compromise as concessions were made to centrist like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson. Obama sought to address those concerns in his sharpest tone yet, complaining of a “gap between the perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health-care bill.”

President Obama rejected in an interview Tuesday the criticism that he has compromised too much in order to secure health-care reform legislation, challenging his critics to identify any “gap” between what he campaigned on last year and what Congress is on the verge of passing.

“Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between the perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health-care bill,” Obama said in an Oval Office interview with The Washington Post about his legislative record this year. “Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill.”

……………………………………

In the interview, Obama offered a vigorous defense of the legislation and the priorities he set out in shaping it, saying he is “not just grudgingly supporting the bill. I am very enthusiastic about what we have achieved.”

He said the Senate legislation accomplishes “95 percent” of what he called for during his 2008 presidential campaign and in his September speech to a joint session of Congress on the need for health-care reform.

……………………………………

Obama said the public option “has become a source of ideological contention between the left and right.” But, he added, “I didn’t campaign on the public option.”

“We don’t feel that the core elements to help the American people have been compromised in any significant way,” Obama said. “Do these pieces of legislation have exactly everything I want? Of course not. But they have the things that are necessary to reduce costs for businesses, families and the government.”

Sphere: Related Content

---

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically each day to your feed reader.

Political Buzz | Powered by WordPress | ElegantBlue is a custom theme by Nathan Rice