Harry Reid Says Senate Won’t Make End-of-Year Deadline
(October 5, 2009 - Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images Europe)
Harry Reid has thrown a major wrench in President Obama’s domestic agenda for his first calendar year in office intimating Tuesday that the Senate will not produce a healthcare reform bill by the end of the year. This comes as no surprise to anyone who has turned on a television in the last six months as the Dems clearly lack the votes to move forward with the plan that Reid revealed two weeks ago. To make the matter worse for Obama and Reid, the final House version is likely to be light years away from anything that will ever emerge from the Senate.
A few hours later, Reid’s office revised his remarks. “Our goals remain unchanged. We want to get health insurance reform done this year, and we have unprecedented momentum to achieve that. There is no reason why we can’t have a transparent and thorough debate in the Senate and still send a bill to the president by Christmas,” said spokesman Jim Manley.
Even the Dems should not get too upset about the delay. After all, we are talking about 1/6 of the US economy. I am yet to hear a reasonable explanation for why this process had to move so expeditiously in the first place. If the House bill was signed into law today, it wouldn’t be completely up and running until 2019 anyway.
The President clearly made yet another tactical error in setting an end of the year deadline for healthcare reform – which he already revised once from his original date of completion being before the August recess. But at the end of the day, what is another couple of months debating this seemingly endless issue?
Not surprisingly, Republicans are encouraged about the delayed timeline as they have finally been given permission by Senate leadership to present their own plan as an alternative to the proposed legislation offered by Reid. We all know that this proposal will be shot down unceremoniously, but it is nice to see that a Republican plan (of the more than 40 that have been drafted to date) will finally see the light of day – even if only for a brief moment.
Woops!! Reid says healthcare reform will be complete by end of year…
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The deal wont be done by the end of the year because brain dead republicans refuse to come to the table and discuss real needs of Americans who are without healthcare. It will be delayed and the country will blame them not Harry Reid.
Hey Hoffman?!?! Who controls the House and the Senate? You are such a jackass! I’m just waiting for you to blame Bush for the healthcare bill not being done by the end of the year.