Word: reformer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...heckle heard round the world - or at least all over cable news. As President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress on health-care reform on Wednesday, Sept. 9, Representative Joe Wilson broke the chamber's strict etiquette by yelling "You lie!" after the President (accurately) noted that his proposed health-care benefits would not extend to illegal immigrants. With those two words, the South Carolina Republican was transformed into a national political figure (if only briefly), loathed by Democrats and rebuked by fellow Republicans for defying tradition. At the GOP leadership's behest, Wilson called the White House...
...health-care-reform fight...
...nation's capital is naive enough to think that President Barack Obama's address before Congress Wednesday evening, Sept. 9, was somehow, in one fell swoop, going to overcome all the opposition to health-care reform, the power of his rhetoric winning over skeptics like a latter-day Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But after the President's impassioned, 47-minute speech drew thunderous applause and improved poll ratings, even some of the most jaded Democrats may have allowed themselves to think that maybe Obama's oratory really was a "game changer," as Senate majority leader Harry Reid...
...next day for the reality to set in that not much about the game had really changed. "Every day," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, who is leading bipartisan talks, said with a sigh, "we get a little closer. And I mean it." (See 10 players in health-care reform...
...Sept. 15, the deadline set by Reid. But if anything, the President's speech gave the negotiators more, not less, to think about. The controversy over Republican Representative Joe Wilson's shouting "You lie!" at the President over his claim that illegal immigrants wouldn't benefit from health-care reform apparently sparked some reconsideration of the relevant language. "We really thought we'd resolved this question of people who are here illegally, but as we reflected on the President's speech last night, we wanted to go back and drill down again," said Senator Kent Conrad, one of the Democrats...