The Note, 6/16/2009: Touch & Go — Chilled by numbers, how boldly will Obama press his case?

ABC News’ RICK KLEIN reports: It’s the Obama touch — or the lack thereof. How hard will the president push — and how soon until he’s pushed back? President Obama’s most immediate domestic challenge and his most pressing foreign-policy challenge are presenting him with similar tests: to place his boldness of vision into similar actions. The president’s instincts consistently lead him to a lighter touch. But sometimes you need the heavy. As when the people of Iran rise up just like the president called on them to — only to have their hopes (and maybe the hopes of those well beyond their borders) shattering in chaotic violence. And as when a fresh price tag underscores the tenuous nature of political will — plus the staggering expense of getting something real done — when it comes to remaking the health care system. On health care, an AMA speech and a CBO report build to a similar impression: We’re not quite there. And some new numbers almost certainly don’t help. Getting there? “Roughly as many Americans are concerned that the government will make changes that reduce the quality of care, raise taxes, hurt small business or limit choices as worry about whether rising costs will cause even more people to lose insurance,” Dan Balz writes in The Washington Post. “In other words, the debate over change versus status quo has not yet been decided. People see as much risk in change as in maintaining the current system. They worry as much about the federal government assuming too much control over health care as much as they worry that, without change, insurance companies will have too much control.” “Great transformation occurs when there is a convergence of crisis and leadership,” Tom Daschle writes. “The crisis is clear — our current health care system is failing. And as President Obama demonstrated yesterday, health care reform remains a top priority for his administration. But there is another group who wields influence in this debate: the stakeholders.” The timing isn’t quite right for Obama to weigh in heavily on particular planks; at this stage, every Democrats’ idea would be compared to the president’s, and every scoring from the Congressional Budget Office will be covered as an obstacle to reform, if not a rebuke to the president who claims it can be done without adding to the deficit. But involved he must become: Before, Obama was on the sidelines of the health care debate because “he felt it was important to not be too proscriptive,” David Axelrod tells The Washington Post’s Ceci Connolly. “Now we’re into a different phase, where decisions are being made very quickly, so it’s time to weigh in to a greater degree.” Connolly: “The Obama strategy, articulated in the speech here and in a series of private meetings, is to present each major stakeholder with an enticement in return for a bit of sacrifice.” “This brings us to the current stage: The Long Tease,” David Brooks writes in his New York Times column. “Every player in this game has a favorite idea, and you are open to all of them. The liberals want a public plan, and you’re for it. The budget guys are for slashing Medicare reimbursements, and you’re for that. The doctors want relief from lawsuits, and you’re open to it. The Republicans want you to cap the tax exemption on employee health benefits. You campaigned against that, but you’re still privately for it.” Brooks: “You ran on a platform of hope and, boy, are you delivering. Every special interest in Washington lives in hope that they will get their pet idea incorporated into the final bill.” With numbers on the table for the first time, an unsettled debate gets a distinct (and maybe familiar) chill. “The politics of fear began to dominate the health care reform debate Monday — much as it did in 1993 and 1994 during the fight over President Bill Clinton’s plan — as both sides raged about the dire consequence of each other’s approach,” Keith Koffler and David M. Drucker write for Roll Call. The Congressional Budget Office scoring of the Kennedy bill says a third of the uninsured population gets covered for $1 trillion. (Do the math from there, if you must.) As for contentions that you won’t lose your health insurance if you like what you’ve got: “The Budget Office letter predicted that many Americans would gain coverage if Kennedy’s legislation is implemented, while others would lose it,” the AP’s David Espo writes. “The letter is fueling GOP charges that the changes being pushed by Democrats would undermine the existing employer-based health-care system,” Bruce Japsen, John McCormick and Noam N. Levey write in the Chicago Tribune. “The report released Monday now gives critics some real numbers to hang on, while Democrats scramble to get their bill to committee and win over reluctant moderates on both sides of the aisle,” Politico’s Martin Kady II reports. New statement Tuesday morning, from White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs: “This is not the Administration’s bill, and it’s not even the final Senate Committee bill. What is clear is what will happen if we let political posturing stand in the way of reform again: exploding deficits, lob loss, dwindling benefits, and millions more Americans joining the ranks of the uninsured. That’s unacceptable, and that’s why stakeholders from across the spectrum are joining with President Obama to enact health care reform that finally gets costs under control and expands coverage — without adding to our deficit.” Noon ET press conference, on the Hill: “Senior Democrats on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold a press conference today at Noon to discuss the urgent need for health reform that reduces costs, protects choice and guarantees quality, affordable health care for all Americans.” Day One of the war, overshadowed: “But as the president spoke at the annual conference of the American Medical Association in Chicago, it became clear that one of the major health plans on the table would cost at least $1 trillion over 10 years yet leave tens of millions of people uninsured,” The New York Times’ Robert Pear and Jackie Calmes write. “The practical problem for Mr. Obama is that by all accounts, the savings and efficiencies he envisions will not occur quickly, certainly not in the 10-year time frame of budget scorekeeping for purposes of passing legislation.” That’s not all: “Don’t forget that the Health Committee bill is one of two percolating through the Senate. The other bill is arguably more important; it comes from the Finance Committee and will attempt to pay for healthcare reform,” ABC’s Z. Byron Wolf reports. “Under one financing proposal, health-care benefits worth more than $17,000 would be taxed as regular income, a cap that would be allowed to grow annually, said people familiar with committee discussions,” The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Hitt and Laura Meckler report. “Under another option, the cap would be set at about $20,000, but with a less generous annual adjustment. Also under consideration: limiting the new taxes based on income.” None of which touches the most explosive proposal: “Disagreement has turned to discord over a key element of Obama’s health care prescription: his insistence on a ‘public plan’ to compete with private insurers,” USA Today’s Richard Wolf writes. “America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade group, is joined by the American Medical Association, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others that have expressed misgivings about greater government involvement.” Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times games the names: “In discussing a ‘public option,’ Obama’s message team is telling Democrats on Capitol Hill to avoid using the phrase ‘universal coverage’ because that phrase is often associated with a single-payer system, which is often associated with ‘socialism,’ which the Obama administration does not support. The Obama team-approved language is instead to talk about ‘guaranteed health care,’ a phrase that is less polarizing.” And the US could be GM?!? (What about the New General Motors?) In the AMA speech, “Beyond flattering doctors, criticizing insurers and defending himself, Obama worked mightily to create a sense of urgency. He said the fate of the U.S. economy depends on taking action right now,” Jill Lawrence writes for Politics Daily. “Talk about the ultimate scare tactic. Maybe it’ll work.” On Iran, the latest out of the chaos, per the AP: “Iran’s powerful Guardian Council is ready to recount specific ballot boxes in last week’s disputed presidential elections, a council spokesman said Tuesday, another twist in an election that has touched off widespread protests.” Follow along (and know more than the Iranians themselves) at Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish blog. Pressed to react, the president did so Monday afternoon: “It would be wrong for me to be silent about what we’ve seen on the television over the last few days and what I would say to those people who put so much hope and energy and optimism into the political process, I would say to them that the world is watching and inspired by their participation regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was,” Obama said, per ABC’s Jake Tapper. The president and his top aides are “walking a very fine line,” ABC’s George Stephanopoulos reported on “Good Morning America” Tuesday. “He wants to encourage the reformers, without appearing to take sides in the election.” He was being pressed: Former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., made the case for action on “This Week” Sunday, and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., was out of the box Monday: “The Administration’s silence in the face of Iran’s brutal suppression of democratic rights represents a step backwards for homegrown democracy in the Middle East.” Writes Bill Kristol: “If I may be presumptuous, I say to President Obama: Speak out. Speak out multilaterally and carefully and sensitively. Speak out kindly and gently. But speak out. Speak for liberty. Speak for America.” “What should Obama say about this ferment in Iran, a process that he has subtly encouraged? I’d argue that he should continue with the line he took in his Cairo speech two weeks ago — speaking directly to Muslim publics even as he proposes dialogue with the repressive regimes that govern Iran and many other nations,” David Ignatius writes in his Washington Post column. Why the hesitance? “The Iranian turmoil has exposed a central conflict in Obama’s foreign policy,” Politico’s Ben Smith reports. “Obama’s core message of democracy and change dovetails with the hopes of Iranian reformers, and even the tech-friendly, youth-driven style of the uprising in Tehran echoes the American president’s own campaign. But Obama also was elected on a promise to tone down America’s moralizing rhetoric.” Obama is looking for others to take the lead, the Washington Examiner’s Julie Mason reports: “The Iranian elections have put the Obama administration in a thorny spot. The White House so far appears unwilling to antagonize Ahmadinejad, in case he hangs on to power and it has to deal with him in the future. At the same time, Obama can’t afford to look conciliatory toward a government in defiance of democratic principles.” His next chance: President Obama has a joint press availability with Korean President Lee Myung-bak, at 11:35 am ET in the Rose Garden. Driving your Hill day (assuming the votes are still there): “House Republicans are preparing to vote en bloc against the $106 billion war-spending bill, a position once unthinkable for the party that characterized the money as support for the troops,” The Hill’s Walter Alarkon reports (and could Rahm Emanuel have framed it any better?). Driving your stimulus day: “A report due to be released today by a Republican senator contends the Obama administration’s stimulus program is fraught with waste and incompetence — evidenced by a turtle crossing in northern Florida that will cost more than $3 million and a snafu in which thousands of Social Security checks went out to people who had died,” the Los Angeles Times’ Peter Nicholas reports. “Modeled after a release from the White House describing 100 stimulus projects that were in the works, the report put out by Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma looks at the same number of projects but reaches starkly different conclusions. The title is ‘A Second Opinion on the Stimulus.’ ” Early pushback: “White House officials say investigators were bound to find some faulty needles in a $787 billion haystack, but they say the Republicans’ $5.5 billion list of 100 dubious projects is thin, given that 20,000 projects have been approved,” Jonathan Weisman and Christopher Conkey report in The Wall Street Journal. “Some questionable projects on the list, such as a $1.5 million guardrail around a dried up Oklahoma lake, have already been killed. Two Defense Department projects were rejected before they got off the drawing board, officials say.” Driving your economic day Wednesday (as the president does some TV rounds Tuesday, in advance of the announcement): “President Barack Obama this week rolls out his proposal for revamping federal regulation of the nation’s financial markets,” McClatchy’s Kevin G. Hall and David Lightman write. “This proposal will be the broadest rewrite of financial regulation since the aftermath of Great Depression. It will reshuffle the responsibilities of regulators, create new protections for consumers and investors, and should, for the first time, bring giant financial players such as hedge funds and private equity companies under direct federal supervision.” Arianna Huffington is really not impressed: “In other words, we are right back to risky business as usual. No harm, no foul. Let’s get back to the fun we were having before this whole worldwide economic collapse thing started happening. It puts a whole other spin on the audacity of hope.” Watching the left: ABC’s Jake Tapper reports on a scathing letter from Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, to the president: “When your administration filed a brief defending the constitutionality of the so-called ‘Defense of Marriage Act,’ I realized that although I and other LGBT leaders have introduced ourselves to you as policy makers, we clearly have not been heard, and seen, as what we also are: human beings whose lives, loves, and families are equal to yours. I know this because this brief would not have seen the light of day if someone in your administration who truly recognized our humanity and equality had weighed in with you.” Judge Sotomayor’s exclusive club? “Judge Sonia Sotomayor on Monday defended her membership in an all-female networking club, telling senators preparing for her Supreme Court confirmation hearing that the group did not discriminate in an inappropriate way,” The New York Times’ Charlie Savage and David D. Kirkpatrick report. Writes Sotomayor: “The organization does not invidiously discriminate on the basis of sex. Men are involved in its activities — they participate in trips, host events and speak at functions — but to the best of my knowledge, a man has never asked to be considered for membership.” We may have come very close to another House special for another departing New York Republican: “The White House dangled the ambassadorship to Ireland in front of GOP Rep. Pete King, even before that coveted post went to the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Daily News has learned,” per the New York Daily News’ Ken Bazinet. “King (R-L.I.) chose to remain in Congress despite the Democrats’ desire to wipe out all the Republican members of Congress in the Northeast.” Cold, hard justice: The trial of former Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., starts Tuesday. Cue Dana Milbank, who has some simple questions: “Why he was filmed by the FBI accepting a briefcase containing $100,000 from an FBI informant and putting the briefcase in the trunk of his car at the Pentagon City mall. Why $90,000 of that money was found by the FBI in the freezer of his Capitol Hill apartment, in small bundles disguised as leftovers.” “But recent events have given the Jefferson defense team reason for hope,” Bruce Alpert writes in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “Last week, lead prosecutor Mark Lytle told Judge T.S. Ellis that Lori Mody, the government informant who was supposed to be the prosecution’s star witness, will not testify.” The Kicker: “It’s not your fault that it was misunderstood, it’s my fault that it was misunderstood.” — David Letterman, apologizing again (and for real) to Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, and her family. “Time to get a new car — decided on the Ford Fusion Hybrid.” — Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., announcing his car purchase on Twitter. Today on “Top Line,” ABCNews.com’s daily political Webcast: Rick Scott of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, and Republican strategist Kevin Madden. Noon ET. Follow The Note on Twitter: http://twitter.com/thenote For up-to-the-minute political updates check out The Note’s blog . . . all day every day.