Obama's healthcare TV showdown
Updated on 25 February 2010
In what could be a defining moment for his presidency, Barack Obama brings Republicans and Democrats together this afternoon in a six-hour televised debate over his flagging healthcare reforms.
It could be a defining moment for the Obama presidency: six hours that could decide the future of his top domestic priority - and shape the politics of this year's crucial mid-term elections.
President Obama is hosting a televised summit in Washington with his Republican critics over his sweeping healthcare reforms. But although it is being billed as a bipartisan meeting of minds, there is little sign of either side giving any ground.
Opening the meeting - Mr Obama called it an issue that affected everyone - and declared that health reform was crucial to reviving America's struggling economy. Money saved on healthcare, he said, could be used to create new jobs and other vital initiatives.
And the White House has made another appeal for unity: spokesman Robert Gibbs said this morning that Obama was "anxious to listen to Republican ideas", and urged the GOP to do likewise.
Thanks to Democratic majorities, both houses of Congress have passed versions of the healthcare plan, designed to extend coverage to tens of millions of Americans, rein in costs and regulate health insurance firms.
But efforts to reconcile the two bills, and find some common ground, have become mired in months of bitter wrangling and gridlock.
Meanwhile, voters are growing increasingly disillusioned with the idea, worried it will just mean higher taxes and more government control over their medical treatment.
And a year after the heady optimism of Obama's inauguration, they are growing increasingly disillusioned with Washington too, which now seems incapable of getting anything done.
Opposition to the changes helped Republican Scott Brown pull off a surprise victory in the Massachussetts special election last month, capturing one of the Democrats' most cherished Senate seats.
His win robbed the Democrats of their filibuster-proof majority in the upper house, spelling huge trouble for efforts to push the healthcare reforms through.
And Obama's own ratings have dwindled to around 50, while every seat in the house and a third of the Senate seats come up for re-election in November.
But on Monday the White House began its fightback.
President Obama published a new version of the bill, mostly based on the more centrist wording endorsed by the Senate.
But the Republicans immediately rejected it, angered by suggestions that the administration might try to get the plan approved by attaching it to a budget bill, so it would only need a simple majority.
But at this stage even Democratic support is wavering, while voters remain to be convinced. So today around 40 members of Congress will meet in the cosy surroundings of Blair House, the president's official guest residence.
Both sides have spent days coming up with a game plan: the Democrats plan to focus on "real stories" and try to blame Republicans for the constant political bickering - while the GOP want to push their own six stage plan, as well as trying to highlight divisions among their rivals.
Not a single Republican backed the proposals in the House or the Senate, and the GOP leader Mitch McConnell said he thought it was "nearly impossible to imagine a scenario under which we could reach an agreement" today. They want the plans to be vastly scaled back or scrapped altogether. At the start of today's summit - senior Republican senator Lamar Alexander said the current bill should be 'put on the shelf' and started from scratch. 'This is a car that can't be recalled and fixed', he said.
But the White House has denied reports that it is working on a Plan B - which would only expand coverage to 15 million more people, half the number in the original proposals, as well as drastically scaling back other provision. One source insisted today that was not "even on the administration's radar".
Healthcare reform is the issue that crippled Bill Clinton's administration. It has driven a rift through the heart of Washington and turned from a debate over health insurance into one over the role of government in people's lives - and the leadership of the president himself.
Barack Obama will need all his powers of persuasion, not to mention a strong hand in Congress, to get what is left of his flagship proposal through.
