Today’s Q for O’s WH – 7/28/2009
EmailTAPPER: The Senate Finance Committee, obviously in working in the bipartisan way they're working, they're talking about not only not having a public plan, or at least some sort of very modified version of a public plan like the cooperatives, not having employer mandates. It seems possible that the bill that comes out of the Senate Finance Committee and the bill that the House Democrats passed will be so different. I realize that you like to emphasize the 75 percent that they agree on, but…
GIBBS: Eighty.
TAPPER: Seventy-five to 80 percent that they agree on, but I wonder if they're irreconcilable and what — how involved the president will be in any sort of reconciliation process.
GIBBS: Well, look, I think in some ways it's a little premature to go. We have not yet seen the outlines, the full outlines or the plan that — that might arise from the Senate Finance Committee or under what umbrella it will come out of the committee with who's support and who's not. And I don't know that we fully yet know what will transpire in the House. Obviously, the president laid down a series of ideas and markers that he believes are tremendously important.
I think I heard somebody say, and I apologize for not knowing exactly who, that the president doesn't care what he gets, he just wants to sign something called reform. And that's just — that could not be farther from the truth. The president wants something that accomplishes the principles and the goals that he set forth in this process, and, quite frankly, dating back to the campaign, that honestly cuts costs, honestly changes the direction of spending on health care, both for families, small businesses and for — for government.
We want to do that in a way that provides increased accessibility to affordable health care. We want to ensure fundamental reforms of insurance, be it the inability for an insurance company to drop somebody's coverage if they get seriously ill or discriminate against somebody because of a preexisting condition or structure an insurance policy that — you've seen this somewhat, sometimes referred to as house or home insurance, rather than health insurance because basically your out-of-pocket expenses have the ability to be so enormous that the notion that you have insurance isn't even realistic anymore. Those are some of the things the president wants to see.
Once we have the process through the House and the Senate and things like that, we'll take a — there will obviously be that process of reconciling whatever different proposals come out. But I think there's broad agreement thus far.
TAPPER: Just to try again on the — the hypothetical I'm proposing, that I'm suggesting is likely what's going to happen. The way that the two bodies are going about doing this are very different. One body is trying to do it in a bipartisan way, the other one is not, or at least doesn't have to, because of the rules of the House. And also the Republicans in the Senate have been more inclined to try to cooperate. It's likely that the two bills will be significantly different in parts. How involved is the president willing to get in the reconciliation process?
GIBBS: Let me just — just — I'm not trying to be flip here, but reconciling the differences in the bills, you're not talking about some formal procedure, post-budget. Right? Meaning — there's a process called "reconciliation" that…
TAPPER: Right
GIBBS: … that I just want to make sure that that's not what we're talking about.
TAPPER: How — whether it's capital-R Reconciliation or small-R reconciliation, how involved is he going to be in leading…
GIBBS: Well, they're very fundamentally different things, but let me — in order to bridge…
TAPPER: Well, I was referring to capital-R Reconciliation, but it could be any way you want to use it.
GIBBS: Well, obviously, I think the president will be involved in working through whatever differences the House and the Senate have. If you're talking about capital-R Reconciliation, obviously, the president believes we're making enormous progress through regular order and through the committee process, and thinks that, at this point, he's comfortable with — with the path that this is going on as we speak.
-jpt
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“One body is trying to do it in a bipartisan way, the other one is not, or at least doesn’t have to, because of the rules of the House. And also the Republicans in the Senate have been more inclined to try to cooperate”
The latter has much more to do with the former.
Posted by: Ryan C | July 28, 2009, 4:19 pm 4:19 pm
If The One’s so concerned about health care costs to the GOVERNMENT, why’d He extend employment benefits to the same-sex partners of certain government employees?
Posted by: Bet Noir | July 28, 2009, 4:20 pm 4:20 pm
Everyday I attempt to read the Q for WH. And everyday I am amazed at how Jake Tapper goes in there asking questions the rest of the media wouldn’t dare, and then having to suffer the round and round he gets from Gibbs. I can’t decide if he (Gibbs) is truly that ignorant, or if he is truly that smart-smart enough, that is, to dodge, spin and turn around every question to the point that we don’t even remember what he was asked by the time he’s done!! How many of you are getting VERY tired of the same old stuff? For example:
TAPPER: Robert, can you tell us how the president will be involved in the “XYZ” effort?
GIBBS: I’ll have to check on that.
TAPPER: Okay. Do you have any more information regarding the presidents comments yesterday about the “PQR” problem?
GIBBS: No, I haven’t read it. I’ll have to check on that.
TAPPER: So, if I could just try this one more time-is there a statement from the WH about the pending agreement between “DEF” and “GHI”?
GIBBS: I have not been privy to that information. I’ll have to check on that.
Good Lord…he makes me dizzy!! Transparency? I would really love to see that come about in this administration.
Posted by: Susan | July 28, 2009, 4:32 pm 4:32 pm
“GIBBS: I’ll have to check on that.”
Gibbs also frequently “doesn’t want to get ahead of” the White House on XYZ. You wouldn’t think THAT’d be much of a problem . . .
Posted by: Bet Noir | July 28, 2009, 4:35 pm 4:35 pm
“Well, I was referring to capital-R Reconciliation, but it could be any way you want to use it.”
Awfully poor word choice considering the powder kegs stacked up around the reconciliation method of passing legislation (even though I don’t remember Democrats whining about it under Bush, the Republicans have thrown HUGE fits over it). I’m not surprised Gibbs was confused about whether you understood what you were asking (and it appears that no, you didn’t).
Posted by: jhw539 | July 28, 2009, 5:01 pm 5:01 pm
Mr. Tapper, once again, I appreciate the line of questioning you tried to pursue. This is probably the greatest source of confusion to me about the whole health care/health insurance reform is why the White House is not being more hands-on in shaping the legislation, rather than letting several different committees produce several different bills (although it now seems to be boiling down to two bills, one in the house and one in the senate). It makes the sales job so much more difficult, because when someone asks about a specific measure, the president cannot say something definitive about what it means or whether it will be included.
I noticed that a couple of times in the AARP tele-townhall this afternoon. For example, someone asked about the much-discussed section of the House bill about end-of-life counseling. The caller was very worried that it would be mandatory and she felt uncomfortable with the idea. She did not, let me be clear, mention the specific bill or specific section. She just said she had heard about the counseling and wanted the president to make it clear– was that really part of THE bill (again, the confusion because there is not a single bill) and what did it mean? The president responded reassuring her that government workers were not going to head to everyone’s houses to ask them how they wanted to die (trying to lighten the mood with humor, which is fine) and by saying, “I think that the only thing that may have been proposed in some of the bills — and I actually think this is a good thing — is that it makes it easier for people to fill out a living will.” He then went on to talk about living wills and what was involved and how more people should have them, as he does.
Then the moderator jumped in and explained, “Mr. President, she mentioned, not in her question, but in her preview, that she’s talking about Section 1232, the infamous page 425, which is being read as mandatory end-of-life care advice and counseling for Medicare. As I read the bill, it’s saying that Medicare will, for the first time, cover consultation about end-of-life care, and that they will not pay for such a consultation more than once every five years. This is being read as saying every five years you’ll be told how you can die.” The president responded with, “that would be morbid,” which was funny. The president then went on to say basically that there was still a lot of negotiating to do and that if people were really upset about some provisions like that, there was time to rethink them. But he said what mattered was the intent of the provision, and that the intent was just to get more info out there for people and for Medicare to pay for that.
If there were only one bill and it was one the WH had crafted in large part, he could speak more authoritatively, it seems to me, about what’s in it and what he wants to see in it. Of course, there will be negotiation on the details. But, as Tapper’s questions indicated, at some point, someone has to get to “win” on such matters as whether there’s a public plan, whether there’s an IMAC, how it will be paid for. When will the president put down more of his own markers on these crucial matters?
Posted by: moderate | July 28, 2009, 6:40 pm 6:40 pm
Jake——
How would Obama know what is in the bill when just last week he admitted he has not read all of it? And better yet, how can the Democrats actually vote on a bill if they REFUSE TO READ IT in its entirety??? Ask the blubbering HUH UH UH HUH UH UH HUH Gibbs that question!!!!
Just like John Conyers, democrat from Michigan who said it was ridiculous to expect them/him to read a 1,000 pg document, yet he votes in favor for it even though he did not read it.
Posted by: KMDay | July 29, 2009, 11:12 am 11:12 am