Obama's ambitious reforms lose steam
by Dan Nowicki - Aug. 8, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

President Barack Obama's ambitious legislative agenda has stumbled on Capitol Hill, imperiling not only his marquee health-care reform initiative but complicating efforts to reform energy and immigration policies.

Senate and House Democratic leaders missed Obama's deadline on health-care reform, and Congress has left Washington for its annual August recess without passing any legislation on what is considered the administration's No. 1 priority.

Its momentum slowed by Democratic infighting between moderates and progressives, the debate over national health care now moves back to fall as the White House and Democratic leaders reconsider their strategies and goals. At the same time, Republican health-care reform foes, who call the Democratic approach too costly and intrusive, are invigorated.
Obama and his allies have run into friction on other fronts, too.

On June 26, the House voted 219-212 to pass a controversial energy-reform and climate-change bill that landed considerably left of the consensus in the Senate, which pushed back work on its own version. And the chances that Congress will get around to the hot-button topic of comprehensive immigration reform this year appear increasingly remote.

"Climate change is obviously in trouble, because it passed the House by an extremely narrow vote, and that always signals trouble in the Senate," said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and editor of the book "The Year of Obama: How Barack Obama Won the White House."

"They'll have to water that bill down considerably for it to have any chance of passing the Senate," Sabato said. "(Immigration reform is) deader than dead for this year. It's already obvious that health care and energy are going to absorb all the legislative energy this year."

Others may quibble with some of Sabato's conclusions, but nobody disputes that the Obama agenda, widely viewed as the most sweeping since President Lyndon Johnson's, has hit a big road bump and that his initial health-care timetable was overly optimistic.

Obama invited Senate Democrats to lunch at the White House on Tuesday in hopes of boosting morale and strengthening resolve before they returned to their districts to talk to constituents.

He had a similar meeting Thursday with a bipartisan group of senators working on health-care reform. Angry critics have been aggressively confronting lawmakers at town-hall meetings and other events.

"He really kind of reminded me of the days when I was an athlete and the coach was giving you a pep talk before the game," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said after the Tuesday meeting with Obama. "You came out of that pep talk that the coach gave you ready to take on the world. We're ready to take on the world."

Most political analysts doubt that Obama and the Democrats will allow the historic opportunity to enact health-care reform slip away from them.

Few presidents enter the Oval Office with Obama's positive poll numbers and solid congressional majorities. And 2009 likely still offers Obama his best opportunity to push through his major priorities, unless and until he gets re-elected. But although experts expect that some sort of a health-care bill will happen, nobody is sure what it will look like.

This year's health-care legislation process has been difficult to follow even by Capitol Hill standards. Three House committees and two Senate committees have been working on bills that would have to be blended into a final version that can pass both chambers.

"Obviously, it won't be as extensive and as expensive as Obama has hoped," Sabato said.

Obama is drawing criticism for giving Congress too much leeway in crafting the plan. The cumulative impact of the blizzard of competing ideas, proposed tax increases and exploding cost estimates rattled voters and muddled the Democrats' message.

"I'm assuming that the Obama people are involved now and working with the leadership on those three (House) bills," said Democratic Rep. Ed Pastor, senior member of Arizona's House delegation.

"What you will probably see in mid-September is one bill that the leadership thinks will get 218 votes with some of the objectives of the Obama administration woven in there. It could be a smaller version. It could be a bigger version," Pastor added.

Pastor said he has been telling people to check back in September "to get a better idea if the issue you're interested in is in or out."

Reid reiterated his commitment to the issue even in the face of rising public opposition, which national Democrats have characterized as partisan and industry-orchestrated "mobs."

"The American people want health-care reform, and we're going to do health-care reform," Reid said. "In spite of the loud, shrill voices trying to interrupt town-hall meetings and just throw a monkey wrench into everything, we're going to continue to be positive and work hard."

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who opposes the Democratic health-care approach, suggested health-care reform's fate is now unfolding across the country as senators and representatives gauge the reaction of their constituents.

"It is impossible to say at this point whether there will be health-care legislation coming to the floor and, if so, what it will look like and, if so, when," said Kyl, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, one of the panels working on a bill. "All I can say is that health care has slowed down substantially. I think that's a good thing."

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