Obama: 'The law I passed is here to stay'

[kpete]

THU JUL 05, 2012 AT 10:15 AM PDT
Obama: 'The law I passed is here to stay'
by Jed Lewison
for Daily Kos

I will work with anybody who wants to work with me to continue to improve our health care system and our health care laws, but the law I passed is here to stay. ...

We will not go back to the days when insurance companies could descriminate against people just because they were sick. We're not going to tell six million young people who are now on their parents health insurance plans that suddenly they don't have health insurance. We're not going to allow Medicare to be turned into a voucher system.

Now is not the time to spend four more years refighting battles we fought two years ago. Now is the time to move forward and make sure that every American has affordable health insurance and that insurance companies are treating them fairly. That's what we fought for, that's what we're going to keep. We are moving forward.

MORE plus video:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/05/1106456/-Obama-The-law-I-passed-is-here-to-stay

[elleng]

1. Near Toledo. (video)

[unblock]

2. i'm sure he meant "signed", not "passed".

[ProgressiveEconomist]

5. How many hundreds of hours do you think President Obama spent convincing

and negotiating with key legislators and interest groups? Do you think his role in passing ACA was limited to just the signing ceremony? Remember the health care smackdown he gave to Republicans like Price and Hensarling at their retreat? Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid deserve a lot of credit, but who do you think was their ultimate resource in twisitng arms?

[phleshdef]

6. If you remember, he pulled Boehner and McConnell and others into a televised negotiation/debate...

...on the healthcare bill.

[unblock]

7. planned, conceived, concocted, devised, developed, proposed, convinced, cajoled, and arm-twisted

and more, sure.

but passed? no, that was one of the few things in the process that he most specifically did not do.

congress did that.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

8. So you agree, much much more than just "signed". And, without the President's actions,

would ACA have passed through Congress's needle's eye?

What single person on earth did more to "pass" ACA than President Obama?

If you have no answer to that question, then I submit the President has the right to claim credit for "passing" ACA. IMO that is what the history books will say, just as they say FDR "passed" Social Security and LBJ "passed" Medicare.

[unblock]

10. he can take all kinds of credit for it and ownership of it. but it's simply an incorrect word choice

to say that he "passed" it.

he can say that he was "instrumental in its passage", that he "secured its passage", that he "staked everything on its passage", and certainly that it "would not have passed without him".

but he can't claim that he passed it any more than pelosi or reid or congress as a whole can claim to have signed it.


also, when a president claims to have "signed" something into law, that's doesn't remotely deny having a hand, quite possibly a huge hand, in creating that law in the first place, and everything involved in getting it passed. in fact, virtually all laws that a president signs had significant input from the president, even if the president publically objected to it prior to signing it.


finally, i've never seen a history book make such an obvious technical mistake as to say the president "passed" a law. if your history book says this, find a better one. the term "passed" is reserved for congress's role in the process.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

14. You're absolutely right!! :)

Watch the Corporate Media/GOP pounce on this.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

20. You did not answer my question.

[unblock]

21. he "passed" it in the same way jfk landed on the moon or i gave birth to mini-unblock.

i don't disagree with anything you said substantively. he is the sine qua non of aca passage.

but HE did not "pass" it.

jfk set the moon mission paramters and the timetable and inspired a nation to take up the challenge. but he did not actually land on the moon.

i can take credit for fathering and jointly raising my son. he wouldn't exist were it not for me. but i did not "give birth" to him. mrs. unblock did that.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

22. You still have not answered my question

[unblock]

23. i really think this horse is dead now, but if you really want further analysis:

actually, you asked two questions:

first, "without the President's actions, would ACA have passed through Congress's needle's eye?"

no. in fact i already addressed this by saying that obama was the "sine qua non". meaning it would not have passed were it not for him. that makes him the prime enabler of passage, but it doesn't make him the entity that passed it.


second: "What single person on earth did more to "pass" ACA than President Obama?"

a strong argument could be made that pelosi did more, reid might get a few votes, and i'm sure there are many names behind the scenes -- perhaps someday we'll read a story about some unknown staffer who turns out to have been the real hero of the deal. and you will recall that obama came under quite a lot of criticism for not being sufficiently involved, having made his proposal and then leaving congress to hash out much of the details. that said, for argument's sake i see no harm in granting you that no single person on earth did more than he did in terms of getting CONGRESS to pass it.


we really don't agree as to substance. we both credit obama with playing a major role, even the primary role, in making the thing become a law. there are many verbs we can use to describe his actions in the process and many other words we can use to describe his significance to it.

all i'm saying is that "passing a law" is has a specific, constitutionally defined meaning and it is quite specifically CONGRESS that does or does not do this. he can and did do many things, but "passing" the aca was not one of them. no single person can EVER be rightly said to have "passed" a law.

this, of course, takes nothing away from his accomplishment. had he said "the law i GOT passed" or "the law i dedicated my first term in office to pass" or "the law i proposed and pushed and convinced congress to pass" or any of a host of similar things, he would have been exactly right.

again, it's like me saying i give birth to my son. i can take credit for many aspects of his being, but that specific action is something that mrs. unblock did, not me. no single did more to help her through her pregnancy and the entire birth process than i did, but the actual giving birth is something that no man can even take credit for.

[Igel]

19. And yet he didn't pass it.

Couldn't so much as cast a single vote in either house of Congress, much less constitute a majority in each house all by himself.

He may have lobbied for it. But lobbying doesn't constitute passing it.

He signed it into law. But that's also not passing it.

Words have meaning. In this case, let's assume that the Constitutional law professor and former practicing attorney simply misspoke when he essentially claimed that Congress is a mere extension of the executive. Anybody can make a speech error and there's no point contorting yourself to say that the speech error isn't a speech error in order to claim somebody's infallible.

[ProfessorGAC]

11. It's Already Just A Hair

It doesn't need to be split.
GAC

[unblock]

15. aww, man! that's my THING!

[Tarheel_Dem]

3. K&R

[SunSeeker]

4. K&R

[treestar]

9. good tie in with the campaign theme

Forward!

[Little Star]

17. +1

[say_hello]

12. Kicked

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

13. He didn't pass anything. He signed the bill that Congress *passed* into law.

Don't tell me that I need to give our constitutional scholar president a lesson in basic civics.

[Little Star]

16. Well, the RW insist on calling it Obamacare so he's just agreeing with them in a way. lol....

[DCKit]

24. Too true.

But they'll only allow him to own it until people stop hating it. Those rebate checks are going out now.

[politicasista]

18. Good n/t