Gibbs' actual comments on the public option

[ProSense]

Q On the health care, supporters of the public option are making another push in preparation for Thursday's meeting to try to get it back on the agenda. By not including it in the President's proposal, is the President saying as far as he's concerned it's dead?

MR. GIBBS: Well, look, I think that we have seen obviously -- and I talked about this some yesterday -- that there are some that are supportive of this. There isn't enough political support in a majority to get this through. The President wanted to find -- took the Senate bill as a base, and looks forward to discussing consensus ideas on Thursday.

<...>

Q Let me give you a chance to answer a question on the minds of some progressives. If you are open to the idea of reconciliation, why not put public option in it and go all the way?

MR. GIBBS: Well, again, the President simply believes that we ought to have an up or down vote on health care. Again, I'm not going to get into the structure of how things would look. The President is focused on what he hopes will be a productive conversation on Thursday.


<...>

Q Robert, one on the public option. You say that it's not in this, but are there any components of the public option that will be taken and transplanted into this proposal that the President has for Thursday?

MR. GIBBS: Again, this is a debate that was largely ended with the notion that it's not going to make it through the legislative process. The proposal that the President put online was where he believed was a good starting point at the end of the debate that had been had on Capitol Hill. We think that the way exchanges are structured and other components of the legislation will increase the amount of choice and competition that people have in picking health insurance.

link

[Raine1967]

1. I want a public option BUT..

Gibbs is right, we don't seem to have the votes.

That said, regulation is a VERY strong way to go in keeping rates down, imo. There are a lot of good things in this bill aside from the lack of the PO.

Also, something people seem to not get about the Public Option, it was only going to be available to people who were uninsured when the exchange went into place. The Public option was never the answer for everyone. It was not an alternative to to the entire HCR plan. I do not get why people don't understand that.

The Public Option was never a single payer alternative.

AND -- I am surprised no one is talking about this: http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-care-meeting/proposal/titlei/congress

Title I. Quality, Affordable Health Care for All Americans

Same Coverage Choices as Members of Congress
Every member of Congress will be required to purchase their insurance from the new health insurance exchange.

[freddie mertz]

7. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

They want to kill it.

Never supported it.

[Raine1967]

18. You are making no sense. eom

[freddie mertz]

20. You have to accept my central premise...

Which is that what we see in public is only a reflection of the real deals and conflicts taking place behind closed doors.

Nancy has gone from a cold, vague response yesterday to a more enthusiastic one today.

Nothing of substance has changed in the intervening period, other than the official White House rejection of the public option, which may have come later....

My conclusion is that Nancy came under pressure to say something more positive as the meeting gets closer.

This would seem to be obvious, in fact.

[Raine1967]

22. thank you for explaining.

I appreciate that.

[freddie mertz]

23. No problem. Thanks for reading too.

Sometimes I type too fast.

[IndianaGreen]

2. Gibbs is an idiot!

Another untrustworthy Presidential Press Secretary keeping a tradition of mendacity that stretches back to Ron Ziegler!

[ProSense]

3. Disappointed that this kills the bogus spin? nt

[jefferson_dem]

4. It doesn't matter what he says. Some people don't understand separation of powers.

See...the President doesn't actually pass the laws. It's ironic that those who screamed the loudest about Bush's "unitary executive" are also the ones demanding the loudest that Obama divine some desirable policy, unilaterally, out of whole cloth.

[ChicagoSuz219]

5. Thank you.

It's been lonely... ;-)

[Raine1967]

6. +1

it's not ironic. it's hypocrisy.

[Clio the Leo]

14. But I seen one time on this MOVIE ....

.... about LBJ .... or it might have been about Andy Jackson .... how the President drove an 18 wheeler up the Capitol steps and then did THIS to the Congressional Critters....



... until they all said, "Ok Mr. President we'll do whatever you want! Here's a pen! You write the laws yourself! You're a REAL MAN!!! What LARGE nuggets you have! Much much larger than ours!!!! RAM IT THROUGH!!! RAM IT THROUGH!!!!"

~ End :sarcasm: ~


..... good grief .... and we had the NERVE to complain about what Cheney was doing? Setting up an office in Capitol? ... and now we want Barack Obama to do the SAME thing? Shameful.

[amborin]

8. more Gibbs gibberish

[ProSense]

9. Your lack of comprehension isn't Gibbs' fault. n/t

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

10. He is a spokesperson... of course listener incomprehension is his fault

[ProSense]

13. What?

There is still time to remove that embarrassing response.

:rofl:

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

19. Most will have no trouble understanding that "embarrassing response"

Your derision, complete with laughing cartoons, tends to be highest when you have no real response.

Gibbs' job is to be understood.

Almost every day you post explanations of what some public relations professional in the WH actually meant when making some opaque and weaselly statement.

The fact that it is a full-time job to clean up after people whose job it is to be easily understandable suggests a problem.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[polichick]

11. Too bad the WH is so afraid of the po - it'll cost them at the polls...

...same way it cost them in Mass.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

12. I thought the presidency was a leadership position.

I never imagined I was voting for someone who would say, "let's see what others would allow me to do." I wanted someone who would step up and tell congress what 77% OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WANT!!!

He isn't there to be pushed around by a bunch of RWers and blue dogs.

Bush got his legislative agenda, when do we get ours?

How do you get what you need/want if you don't even bother to put it on your agenda?

Now we'll never get a PO because as soon as it is offered in the future all we'll hear is, "not even Obama would support it."

I'm sorry but this is a cop-out.

[liberalpragmatist]

16. Actually, House may be more of a problem with PO than the Senate

Arm-twisting could probably get a weak public option passed with 51 votes in the Senate. In the House, however, we're 3 votes down from November, plus the Stupak-ers are voting no. So they need to pick up 10-15 Democrats who voted no. The only two from the left who voted no were Kucinich and Massa. Massa could probably be whipped into voting yes, but Kucinich probably can't. That means that the rest of the bill needs to be passed with the votes of Blue Dogs, many of whom voted no on the House bill b/c they opposed the public option.

[hulka38]

17. More dissembling. They don't want a PO - it really is that simple.

[freddie mertz]

21. What he says is that it is up to the Senate to get the votes, which he claims they do not have.

What we learn from this is that 1. the PO is not something the WH cares about enough to do anything to help it make the cut and 2. by passing the responsibility back to Senate and emphasizing the lack of votes, they have chosen to discourage the effort to get it passed by describing it as weak and by implication, as futile.

The inevitable conclusion: The president has never really supported the public option.