Endnote: As the Romney-as-flip-flopper frame continues to intrigue the press, recall that Obama changed his mind, too. Early in his White House quest, he favored a requirement to cover only children and later moved to a full-blown requirement to catch everyone after his rivals supported it, and political forces pushed him to agree to it—the same political forces that pushed Romney to accept the mandate in 2006. And now conservatives in the GOP and the political and business interests they represent are pushing Romney away from the plan he once called a “Republican way of reforming the market.” That’s the real mandate story, and it’s far, far away from the opp artist gotcha spin du jour.
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Also worth noting is that Obama insisted the mandate wasn't a tax when he was selling it to Congress, but is arguing in court that it is a tax. Everybody has their areas of flexibility, although some more than others.
Story here.
#1 Posted by Weldon Berger, CJR on Mon 26 Mar 2012 at 07:18 PM
"...and political forces pushed him to agree to it..."
This is unnecessarily vague. The political forces that pushed him to agree to it were, by name, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, and it was no small task for them to accomplish this. The first challenge was that Rep. Dingell and Sen. Kennedy, the chairmen of respective committees in the House and Senate which dealt with healthcare, had their own bill, which would have opened Medicare to all citizens, not at all what the insurance industry wanted. Ms. Pelosi engineered the removal of Rep. Dingell from his chairmanship, while Mr. Reid took healthcare away from Kennedy's Health Committee and assigned it to Sen. Baucus's Finance Committee. Even before his inauguration, Mr. Obama had requested that Congress not take up healthcare in 2009, and instead focus on financial reform. The Democratic leadership refused, effectively denying the Administration the opportunity to draft its own healthcare bill.
Still, Mr. Obama remained cool to the individual mandate. You may recall that when Scott Brown was elected to Sen. Kennedy's seat, depriving the Democrats of their 60-vote majority, and putting passage of the bill in question, the President suggested that Congress might consider a scaled-back healthcare reform bill, one closer to his own proposal, notably without the mandate. But Sen. Reid forged ahead and, dropping the "public option", odious to the insurance industry, brought the bill across the finish line.
Its not clear that Mr. Obama had any significant input in shaping the healthcare bill. Rather, he dutifully supported his party's Congressional leadership. Yet the press insists on referring to PPACA as "the President's Healthcare bill" or "Obamacare". Ironically, the financial reform bill, which actually was drafted by the Administration, is always referred to as "Dodd-Frank".
Mysterious are the ways of the Press.
#2 Posted by S Bayer, CJR on Mon 26 Mar 2012 at 08:18 PM
Man, I just love how the Feds get to decide whether the Feds are acting lawfully.
Yeah, that's the Spirit of '76.
NOT!
#3 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Tue 27 Mar 2012 at 02:36 PM
Indeed. He was for it before he was against it. Check.
#4 Posted by Mark A. York, CJR on Tue 27 Mar 2012 at 11:44 PM