Word: careful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Until quite recently, that flexible approach appeared to be working pretty well. Congressional chairmen usually prefer having control to being told what to do by the White House. And interest groups and political adversaries that had been on opposite sides of past health-care battles were at the negotiating table, in no small part because Obama had convinced them that reform was really going to happen this time. As a result, the legislative process is already further along than it ever got under Clinton. (Read "The Year in Medicine 2008: From...
...fault lines are opening up everywhere you look. Liberals are worried that Obama is going squishy on including a strong, government-run "public option" among the health-care choices available to Americans. Conservatives are warning that the legislation won't do enough to control health costs. Rural lawmakers are complaining that proposed Medicare cuts will fall too hard on their states. The two sides of the abortion debate are tussling over whether the procedure should be covered under the plan. And those are just the arguments going on among Democrats...
...President wants to accelerate the process, he may have to abandon his original hands-off strategy and start getting more deeply involved. Growing numbers of Democrats are arguing behind closed doors that Obama could ease their qualms if he were clearer about where his red lines are for health-care reform. While the President insists, for instance, that he wants to see a public plan in the legislation, he has refused to spell out in detail what it should look like. Meanwhile, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has been talking up the possibility of setting up a public...
...shock as Clinton retreated from them when the Senate balked. That vote was one of the major factors behind the massive defeat House Democrats suffered in 1994, and some Representatives are wondering whether they might "get BTU'd" again if they stick their necks out for an ambitious health-care-reform bill that gets watered down in the Senate. "We all like Rahm," a Democratic House member told me. "But we also remember where he was in 1993." Back then, Emanuel was a top Clinton White House strategist...
...Administration officials predict that Obama will not weigh in on many of the more contentious issues until a health-care bill passes both houses and reaches a conference committee this fall, much as he has done with other big bills. There are areas where Obama will be needed to help cut a final deal: determining which taxes will be raised and which programs will be cut to pay for the legislation; defining the shape and size of a public plan; deciding what businesses and individuals will be required to do. Between now and then, White House officials...