Words.
"This is the paradox of the moment: President Obama's speech on Afghanistan and his subsequent jobs summit underscored why it's essential to get a health-care bill done quickly. The calendar of politics has an urgency that the dilatory pace of the U.S. Senate doesn't match.
Here's the deal. If Obama gets to sign a health-care bill before he gives his State of the Union address, he starts 2010 with a historic victory to proclaim before the country and then can pivot quickly to the issue likely to dominate the midterm elections: jobs and how to create them.
...Getting a health-care bill is important on its own, but it's central to establishing Obama's credentials as a domestic reformer and to proving that Democrats are capable of governing. This is why the president made an unusual visit to Capitol Hill on Sunday to push fractious negotiations forward. Senators need to get their health-care bill done before the end of this year so the House and Senate can come to a speedy agreement on a final bill in January.
...Liberals are absolutely right in their frustration with the Senate. It's become an absurd institution, perhaps the least democratic legislative body in any country calling itself a democracy. It makes no sense that four or five votes can trump 54 or 55 votes. But the Senate is what it is. For now, liberals have to live with this.
Republicans, in the meantime, know that delay is their friend, and they will delay and delay -- and delay some more. The emergence last week of a memo from Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire to his GOP colleagues outlining all the ways they can slow action should put spine into Democrats.
...The best news for advocates of health-care reform is that Reid has sought to force action by convening a group of 10 Democrats, five moderates and five progressives, to work out a compromise. After several meetings over the weekend, they were focusing on an alternative to the public option modeled after the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan, even as progressives sought further expansions in coverage.
It's a shame that a public option might be stopped by a small number of senators. But the compromise would still give government a role in promoting competition as the overseer of an alternative that is likely to focus on not-for-profit insurance plans.
...Obama is right that nation-building should begin at home. Health-care reform will mark the beginning of domestic nation-building."
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