Word: congressed
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...manipulative and synthetic as "The Language of Health Care 2009" often sounds, the bottom line is Luntz knows what he's doing. He's widely credited for helping Republicans seize and maintain control of Congress in the 1990s, and many Luntzisms continue to be staples of Washington rhetoric (just think of how often you hear about "tax relief"). Every American has a stake in the massive battle coming over health care reform, and voters would be wise to understand the weapons deployed to sway public opinion on both sides. However, how to craft smart reform and find common ground...
...efforts to repair the financial system and jump-start the economy. If he succeeds, he probably will be re-elected. But Barack Obama's place in history will be determined by the long-term structural changes he initiates, and his most important legacy battle is just beginning as Congress tackles the holy grail of modern liberalism, a universal health-care system...
...President has been clever about this. He hasn't made it the centerpiece of his Administration - and a fat target for his opponents - as Bill Clinton did. He hasn't proposed a specific plan, allowing, instead, a proposal to percolate through the Congress. "Everything about this process seems the polar opposite of 15 years ago," says John Rother of AARP. "The Administration seems determined not to make the same mistakes as Clinton did." (See the five truths about health care in America...
...This time, with significant Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, there is real optimism that a universal plan will be passed and enacted. But Clinton also had Democratic majorities - and strong public approval, at first. This time, because of the rules agreed on in the arcane budget process, Democrats will need only a simple majority vote in the Senate. But the process could run into the same two roadblocks that caused universal health insurance to fail in the past: the specter of "socialized medicine" and the fear that the cost of the program will, like that of other entitlements...
These days, Republicans have the desperate aura of an endangered species. They lost Congress, then the White House; more recently, they lost a slam-dunk House election in a conservative New York district, then Senator Arlen Specter. Polls suggest that only one-fourth of the electorate considers itself Republican, that independents are trending Democratic and that as few as five states have solid Republican pluralities. And the electorate is getting less white, less rural, less Christian - in short, less demographically Republican. GOP officials who completely controlled Washington three years ago are vowing to "regain our status as a national party...