Congress passes Historic Health Care Bill! Congratulation to all American and to our President.
President Obama has shown his strong conviction by fulfilling his election promise. He  proved that he is a strong and persistent President and his determination is unwavering even in the face of strong opposition.

Congress passes Historic Health Care Bill!
Congratulation to all American and to our President.

President Obama has shown his strong conviction by fulfilling his election promise. He  proved that he is a strong and persistent President and his determination is unwavering even in the face of strong opposition.

Ahead of a crucial health-care reform vote in the U.S. House of Representatives expected on Sunday, President Obama says members of Congress face a choice between supporting the interests of insurance companies or taking a historic step to meet the needs of Americans. Democratic leaders are voicing confidence they can achieve the 216 votes required to pass the legislation, while Republicans are vowing to do everything they can to kill it.

With President Obama reported to have told wavering Democratic lawmakers that vote could well determine the success of his presidency, he traveled a few kilometers from the White House to suburban Virginia to make a high visibility public appeal.

The president described the health care debate as being in its final stages after a century of struggle, saying it’s about the character of the United States rather than merely the cost of health care for Americans. “So the only question left is this: Are we going to let the special interests win once again? Or are we going to make this vote a victory for the American people?,” he said.

The legislation the House will vote on is estimated to cost $940 billion over ten years. But because of savings in some areas, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says it could reduce the size of the federal deficit by $138 billion, something the president is hoping will attracting support from wavering Democrats.

To read more click…

Obama Makes Final Public Appeal on Health Care

WASHINGTON, Oct 14 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Wednesday proposed another $13 billion in spending next year — or $250 per person — to help some 57 million senior citizens, disabled people and military veterans weather the economic recession.

The funds would extend the one-year $250 “Economic Recovery Payments” program approved this year as part of the $787 billion economic stimulus package, but administration officials said it should not be viewed as the start of a second stimulus plan.

“Even as we seek to bring about recovery, we must act on behalf of those hardest hit by this recession,” Obama said in a statement urging Congress to approve the plan.

“These payments will provide aid to more than 50 million people in the coming year, relief that will not only make a difference for them, but for our economy as a whole,” he said.

An administration official said the president would not insist that the $13 billion program be paid for by offsetting cuts in federal spending. The official said in the context of a recession, such spending is often not offset.

“We’re going to have a conversation with Congress about the details, but one of the things the president will insist on in that conversation is that whatever way it’s structured, Social Security solvency would not be adversely affected,” the official said, referring to the government retirement program.

Congress would need to draft legislation enacting the measure and approve it.

Obama’s call for Congress to expand the program of $250 payments for another year comes as people receiving Social Security benefits face the prospect of no cost of living increase next year.

NEGATIVE INFLATION

Consumer Price Index figures used to compute the cost of living adjustments are due on Thursday and are expected to show negative inflation over the past year, administration officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In such cases, they said, Social Security benefits remain at the same level as the previous year.

A spokesman for the Senior Citizens League, a nonpartisan seniors advocacy group, said the one-time payment does not come close to what seniors will lose without an actual cost of living adjustment in their Social Security checks next year.
To read more click below…
Obama asks Congress to back new payments to elderly

WASHINGTON, Sept 14 (Reuters) – Democratic leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives plan to condemn the Republican who yelled “You lie!” at President Barack Obama during a speech to Congress last week, a Democratic aide said on Monday.

The Democrats agreed to introduce a formal resolution of disapproval of the heckler, Representative Joe Wilson, on Tuesday, the aide said.

They initially said they planned to take no action against Wilson, but made an about-face after the South Carolina Republican emerged as an overnight hero among at least some conservatives.

Wilson shouted “You lie!” at Obama on Wednesday during his address to a joint session of Congress on healthcare reform.

Wilson told “Fox News Sunday” that he did not plan to apologize on the House floor as Democrats have demanded, saying that he had apologized to the president and his apology had been accepted.

Responding to reports that the Democrats were moving to condemn Wilson, House Republican Leader John Boehner said he agreed that it was time to move on and discuss healthcare as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week.

“That’s why I plan to vote ‘no’ on this resolution. Instead of pursuing this type of petty partisanship, we should be working together to lower costs and expand access to affordable, high-quality health coverage on behalf of the American people,” Boehner said in a statement.

Wilson, in his fifth two-year term, and his Democratic challenger in next year’s election, Rob Miller, have both reported a windfall in campaign contributions since the Republican’s nationally broadcast outburst.

Wilson has raised more than $1 million, Politico.com reported. Miller has raised just over $917,000, according to the Democratic fundraising web site ActBlue. (Writing by JoAnne Allen; Editing by Anthony Boadle)
To read more click below…

Democrats to condemn US lawmaker who heckled Obama

By ROSS DOUTHAT
Throughout the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama’s most loyal constituencies were the national press corps and the left wing of the Democratic Party.
Those on the left loved him because they thought he was one of them. They tolerated all the happy talk about bipartisanship because they were sure that deep in his community-organizing heart Obama shared their premises, their passions and their goals.

The media loved him because he was a great story and a great campaigner. The press favors dreamy liberals, but it worships success, and Obama was the best of both worlds — a soaring rhetorician with a ruthlessly competent political machine.

But now both groups are turning on him. As the health care debate enters its decisive weeks, the left doubts President Obama’s commitment, and the press doubts his competence.

For MSNBC-watching, Huffington Post-devouring liberals, the administration’s fancy footwork on a public health care plan (maybe it’s out, maybe it’s in, but either way it’s negotiable) is just the latest example of the president’s unseemly unwillingness to steamroll the opposition. He has been too solicitous to Republicans, too hands-off with Democrats, too detached and technocratic — even as a once-in-a-generation opportunity is passing liberalism by.

Where the left sees betrayal, the press sees ham-fistedness. The White House’s messages have been mixed — fiscal hawkery one day, moralism the next. The administration has allowed distractions like the Skip Gates affair to crowd out his agenda. It has overlearned the lessons of the Clinton-care debacle and given Congress too much leeway. It has underlearned the lessons of the Bush-era Social Security debacle and gone to war before there’s an actual piece of legislation on the table.

Some of this is true — but some of it is overstated. And at its worst, it’s an example of the bipartisan derangement that Gene Healy of the Cato Institute has dubbed “the cult of the presidency.”

To the disciples of this cult, the president is the government. “He is a soul nourisher,” Healy writes, “a hope giver, a living American talisman against hurricanes, terrorism, economic downturns and spiritual malaise.” Anything that happens on his watch happens because of him. And just as important, anything that doesn’t happen can be pinned entirely on his mistakes.

President Obama has been turning these quasi-messianic expectations to his advantage since he first entered national politics. But that doesn’t make them any less unrealistic.

To listen to the chatter about where his administration has gone wrong, you would think that the rest of the Democratic Party had no agency — that Democratic office-holders are slaves to poll numbers that only the White House can control, and that the way a Max Baucus, a Ben Nelson or a Blanche Lincoln votes is entirely determined by whether the president of the United States twists the right arms and hits the right rhetorical notes.

In reality, the health care wrestling match is less a test of Mr. Obama’s political genius than it is a test of the Democratic Party’s ability to govern. This is not the Reagan era, when power in Washington was divided, and every important vote required the president to leverage his popularity to build trans-party coalitions. Fox News and Sarah Palin have soapboxes, but they don’t have veto power. Mr. Obama could be a cipher, a nonentity, a Millard Fillmore or a Franklin Pierce, and his party would still have the power to pass sweeping legislation without a single Republican vote.

What’s more, health care reform is the Democratic Party’s signature issue. Its wonks have thought longer and harder about it than any other topic. Its politicians are vastly better at talking about the subject than Republicans: if an election is fought over health care, bet on the Democrat every time. And for all the complexity involved, it’s arguably easier to tackle than other liberal priorities. It’s more popular than cap and trade, it’s less likely to split the party than immigration and it’s more amenable to technocratic interventions than income inequality.

If the Congressional Democrats can’t get a health care package through, it won’t prove that President Obama is a sellout or an incompetent. It will prove that Congress’s liberal leaders are lousy tacticians, and that its centrist deal-makers are deal-makers first, poll watchers second and loyal Democrats a distant third. And it will prove that the Democratic Party is institutionally incapable of delivering on its most significant promises.

You have to assume that on some level Congress understands this — which is why you also have to assume that some kind of legislation will eventually pass.

If it doesn’t, President Obama will have been defeated. But it’s the party, not the president, that will have failed.
To read more click the link below…
Don’t Blame Obama