Note: ‘It’s Time’ — Leadership Critical in Health Care Debate

By RICK KLEIN Consider us educated — since we’ve been taking notes. We’ve learned that settled law looks different depending on where you sit. We’ve learned that nobody really wants racial and ethnic politics to air out on national television for a week. We’ve learned that there’s no way to ask too many questions about two words in an old speech — and no way to really explain what those words meant, anyway. And we’ve learned to be skeptical of signs of legislative progress — even when they’re pre-cooked for media consumption. (There’s always that danger of falling flat.) This is moving the ball, but whether or not we can just blame the camera work, it’s hard to see where it’s going to land: Health care is advancing on the Hill, but that’s not necessarily the same as progressing. The House bill now exists (with holes, and questions about price tags that Blue Dogs will still answer). One Senate version of the bill will get out of committee Wednesday (though the other, more controversial portion is still to come). It sets up a critical phase in the health care debate. Democrats have sought to use the illusion of momentum — agreements with stakeholders, white papers and reports, press conferences and press releases — to move toward the real deal. Now they’re starting to pass some legislative marking points: committee votes, actual bills, real details. If this doesn’t produce consensus toward the votes that count, what will? The Democratic National Committee is among the entities that doesn’t want to find out. Organizing for America is picking up its lobbying efforts — and, in a strategic shift, focusing on moderate Democrats in a new round of TV ads, even more than potential Republican pick-ups. “It’s time,” declares the new ad that urges viewers to contact their senators (particularly if those senators include on-the-fence Democrats).  “We’d like to do it with the votes of members of both parties,” White House senior adviser David Axelrod tells Bloomberg’s Ed Chen. “But the worst result would be to not get health-care reform done.” (And will he get more active in the details? “I can’t guarantee whether his sleeves will be rolled up or not,” said Axelrod.)  Time for a stronger hand? The Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein dials 911: “There are moments in the life of any important policy debate when things hit a dead end. There aren’t any easy answers, any options that don’t involve real political risk. And it’s at those moments when you discover who the real leaders are. We are at just such a moment with health-care reform.”  President Obama seeks to keep the momentum going with remarks on health care from the Rose Garden around 1 pm ET, part of the White House strategy to encourage (without bullying) allies on the Hill. It must be time for TV interviews, too: ABC News Medical Editor Dr. Timothy Johnson is among those interviewing the president at the White House Wednesday to talk health care reform. (The interview will air on “World News with Charles Gibson” and on Thursday’s “Good Morning America”; look for additional clips at ABCNews.com and on other ABC platforms.) Judge Sonia Sotomayor returns to her hot seat (plus her notepad) at 9:30 am ET. Plus, it’s a big Hillary day: a 1 pm ET speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. Meet the new, new Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Think this rolls up the sleeves of the other side? “House Democrats on Tuesday unveiled sweeping health-care legislation that would hit all but the smallest businesses with a penalty equal to 8% of payroll if they fail to provide health insurance to workers,” Janet Adamy and Laura Meckler report in The Wall Street Journal. “The House bill, which also would impose new taxes on the wealthy estimated to bring in more than $544 billion over a decade, came as lawmakers in the Senate raced against a self-imposed deadline of this week to introduce a bill in time for action this summer.”  “To help pay for the new plan, the bill would slap a new surtax of up to 5.4 percent on those with incomes of more than $400,000 a year,” per ABC’s Jonathan Karl, Avery Miller and Sadie Bass. “ABC News has learned Senate Democrats are considering something entirely different — new taxes on health insurance and pharmaceutical companies. The new taxes could bring in more than $100 billion, but were hotly opposed by the health industry.”  “A majority of Americans, 58%, supported increasing income taxes on the wealthy to pay for health care, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll found this week, but some experts say a less popular but broader tax tied to health care spending could be more sustainable over time,” per USA Today’s John Fritze.  Cue the moderate D’s: “Tax is a four-letter word” with voters, said Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., per The Washington Post’s Lori Montgomery and Ceci Connolly.  “I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere in the Senate,” said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., per the Los Angeles Times’ Noam M. Levey.  Cue the editorials: “Pretending that ‘the rich’ alone can fund government, let alone the kind of activist government that the president and Congress envision, is bad policy any way you look at it,” The Washington Post editorial reads.  Cue the president: “We’re out of money,” President Obama told the Fox broadcasters last night (in reference to a proposed bailout of the National League, but in a quote that’s easy enough to apply to another context). (The NL still hasn’t won one since before Obama was a state senator.)   Timeline: “Senior Democrats in Congress and the White House said they are growing less concerned about passing a bill before the break, and argued that Senate Finance Committee approval would send a strong signal that health-care reform can be achieved this year,” the Post’s Montgomery and Connolly write.  If not now . . . “I won’t say it isn’t going to happen. But it will be awhile before the stars are in proper constellation again,” Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., who knows a thing or two about how long this can take, said on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line” Tuesday.  What could stop it? “Party leaders have a long way to go — in a very short time — before Pelosi, Dingell and the rest can say they’ve achieved this long-sought legislative landmark,” Politico’s Patrick O’Connor, Carrie Budoff Brown, and Chris Frates report. “The Congressional Budget Office threw up a barrier almost as soon as the bill was introduced Tuesday, estimating its cost at more than $1 trillion.”  “The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the trade group of the pharmaceutical industry, said it won’t support the bill because of changes in the Medicare Part D benefit, which it said would constitute a tax increase on seniors,” per the Washington Times’ Jennifer Haberkorn.  House Republican leaders rally opposition: At 10 am ET, Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, ranking Republican on the Joint Economic Committee, will give a presentation for GOP leaders on the structure of the House Democrats’ health care plan. The chart they’re trying to make famous on the House floor and their districts is HERE.  Outside action: Health Care for America Now today is releasing a new ad campaign to thank members of Congress — including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. — for “being champions of real health care reform.” Also being thanked, in print ads: Representatives Bruce Braley (IA-1), David Price (NC-4), Mike Michaud (ME-2), Chris Murphy (CT-5), Allison Schwartz (PA-13), Adam Schiff (CA-29), Jane Harman (CA-36), and Loretta Sanchez (CA-47).  Sotomayor answers her critics: it was a “rhetorical flourish,” it was a “bad idea,” it “fell flat” — and one wise Latina knew how to cop to it. She’s no Chief Justice John Roberts, and the day was a little rougher than her handlers expected or wanted. But with a vote margin like this, she doesn’t have to perfect. “During her enforced silence, Judge Sonia Sotomayor has been portrayed as a woman of passion. Her speeches, endlessly dissected in the weeks since President Obama nominated her to the Supreme Court, reveal a fiery Latino pride. Her colleagues say she runs a ‘hot bench,’ ” Sheryl Gay Stolbert writes in The New York Times. “That was not the woman on display here Tuesday.”  Is she a “terror on the bench”? “Sotomayor explained that she gives lawyers appearing in her court ‘an opportunity to explain their positions on both sides and to persuade me that they’re right,’ and noted that the judges on her court, the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, have a reputation for peppering lawyers with questions,” ABC’s Ariane de Vogue and Theresa Cook report. “During the line of questioning, Sotomayor, 55, responded in measured tones and frequently looked down to her table to take notes.”  “Whatever Sonia Sotomayor does to reward herself — a glass of wine, an ice cream sundae, a bubble bath — surely she must be giving herself a small pat on the back after surviving her first day of cross-examination by the Senate Judiciary Committee without any kind of gaffe,” Time’s Jay Newton-Small writes.  “A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not know that a gaggle of white Republican men afraid of extinction are out to trip her up,” Maureen Dowd writes in her New York Times column.  “If anything, actually, Sotomayor has shown herself to be even more conciliatory toward the Republicans going after her than is the pragmatic president who nominated her,” Salon’s Mike Madden writes. “For the most part, though, the very nature of a Supreme Court confirmation hearing keeps anything too substantive from being discussed. . . . If her patient, unruffled testimony Tuesday is any indication, Sotomayor appears to play that game as well as any of her predecessors.”  “The nominee and her questioners know that her confirmation is a sure thing unless she makes a dreadful mistake during the hearings — and the cautious Sotomayor was in no danger of doing that yesterday,” Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post.  “The street-smart Supreme Court nominee served up each personal memory to put a human face on her record through the first day of questioning — a largely gentle probe of her views on  the hottest controversies in the law, from guns to abortion,” James Gordon Meek writes in the New York Daily News.  “Confession is good for the soul — and for your chances of being confirmed,” Newsweek’s Howard Fineman writes.  Working at (and in) the margins: “Republican aides worked through the night, Tuesday into Wednesday, studying the 108-page transcript from Tuesday’s hearing. They believe Sotomayor told a variety of stories, none of them entirely truthful, to explain her series of infamous ‘wise Latina’ speeches,” Byron York writes for the Washington Examiner. “And they question her efforts to distance herself from the work of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, on whose board she served for twelve years in the 1980s and early 1990s.”  Finding meaning: “Something broader and less obvious is going on as well: Republicans also are using the Sotomayor nomination to advance the broader indictment they are developing against President Barack Obama, which is that he and his administration are much further to the left than they claim to be,” Gerald F. Seib writes in his Wall Street Journal column.  Curtain-raising Secretary Clinton: “Eclipsed by a globe-trotting president, a foreign policy-savvy vice president and a bevy of special envoys, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is struggling to re-emerge this week as the Obama administration’s diplomatic heavyweight,” the AP’s Matthew Lee writes. “Clinton was set to deliver what aides billed as a major policy address at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington on Wednesday. A day later, she heads off on an around-the-world trip.”  The Washington Post’s Al Kamen: “Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton kicks off her worldwide ‘I’m Ba-aack’ tour today, starting with what’s being billed as a ‘major policy address’ at the Council on Foreign Relations here. She’s then off tomorrow on a week-long trip to India and Thailand.”  Watching those relations with Congress: “With $108 billion in International Monetary Fund loan guarantees in jeopardy last month, White House economic officials begged, cajoled and cut deals with Democrats to secure passage of legislation boosting the fund’s power. Days later, President Barack Obama announced he wasn’t bound by any of the agreement,” Jonathan Weisman writes in The Wall Street Journal. “The ensuing flap over the president’s June 24 signing statement is the latest in a series of clashes between the White House and Congress over an issue Mr. Obama once fought against himself: presidential fiat.”  House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass.: “It’s outrageous. It’s exactly what the Bush people did.” On the stimulus — now it’s a problem if money is spent too fast? “Community groups and agencies could be overwhelmed as they receive millions of dollars from a $5 billion stimulus program to make low-income households more energy efficient, some state officials and members of Congress warn. Some of the groups have been faulted in the past for mismanaging thousands of dollars a year in federal aid,” per USA Today’s Matt Kelley.  In New York, waiting on Andrew Cuomo’s numbers: “Gov. David A. Paterson’s campaign pulled in at least $2.3 million during the first half of the year, a slowdown from the pace he reported in January, a campaign spokeswoman said Tuesday, who added that the Senate stalemate led him to cancel nearly a dozen fund-raising events,” The New York Times’ Danny Hakim writes. “On Wednesday, when official results are filed, political observers will be comparing Mr. Paterson’s filings with those of Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, who many Democrats believe will run for governor in next year’s election.”  Tracy Sefl, a Paterson campaign spokeswoman: “With the Senate crisis hopefully behind us, or at least abated, he’s eager to return to a full fund-raising schedule. . . . He wasn’t in the position to wake up every morning and do a fund-raising breakfast.” It’s Congresswoman-elect Judy Chu in California, set to become the first Chinese-American woman to serve in Congress. “Since the May primary, when Judy Chu defeated Gil Cedillo for the Democratic nomination, she has been considered the heavy favorite. Tuesday’s vote counts mimicked voter registration in the district, in which Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 2 to 1,” per the Pasadena Star-News’ Rebecca Kimitch. 
The Kicker: “People always say I have the ability to turn people on.” — Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, as a protestor was hauled away during Day Two of the Sotomayor hearings.  “Congratulations, I’ve been a big fan for a long time.” — President Obama, to Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, who allowed that he’s also been a fan of the president. 
Today on the “Top Line” political Webcast, live at noon ET: Actor David Rasche, star of the new political film “In the Loop”; and Ana Marie Cox of Air America. 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:

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