Cleaver's Cut and Engle's Angle on Health Care

Published December 24, 2015

It's awfully hard to compete with a president who complains about media types getting all "wee-weed up" during the 2008 campaign.

President Obama said the media and some political skeptics (yikes, some were in his own party!) got a serious case of the vapors after John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate.

By dinner time on the East Coast, the presidential "wee-weed" had its own Twitter hashtag and Twitterers across the land chased the sweet "wee- weed" tweets all the way home.

Again, there's just no way to compete.

But Democratic Reps. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri and Eliot Engel of New York did not disappoint when it came to analyzing party woes on health care and how to shake things up.

"There is a need for us hit the reset button because I don't think what we're discussing now is of any value to the American public," Cleaver told me.

"First of all we (Democrats) can't do name calling. I don't think Democrats are winning any points by calling people mobs."

The "reset" button refers to policy and the politics. He fears both are off track and Democrats need to lower the temperature of the debate. He also said Democrats might be wise to plot a strategy that looks to win health reform in December. It could take that long, he said, to detoxify the debate. Winning might also require more serious engagement with Republicans.

"I also believe that we need to punch the reset button to sit down and look at what we do to make sure that all the things that are important to most Americans are contained in the legislation. And it would be my hope we could have something all sides could agree on and have a bipartisan deal. We need to begin to talk to each other instead of at each other. If we come up with a strictly Democratic plan, it will increase this putrid partisanship that in my estimation does enormous damage to the nation. My reset is let's go back and figure out how to stop antagonizing the nation. This is crazy."

Cleaver said some attendees at town halls are intentionally disruptive and others are misinformed -- not because they want to be, he says, but because health care provokes deep anxiety.

"I think the country's being hurt," Cleaver said. "And the way the conversation has gone, more people are moving away from the (Democratic) plan. We have not, as Democrats, we have have probably not taken control of the dialogue. Consequently, we have people who are taking control of the dialogue who are in some instances providing misleading information."

Cleaver said the risk of failure is high, but says a health care defeat would not be a "death knell" for the Obama presidency.

"His numbers, to be honest, have been falling," Cleaver said of Obama (skeptics might recall Cleaver backed Hillary Clinton until she suspended her campaign). "But I think that running over the Republicans, even if happened to us when they were in charge, further damages the country.
And, yes, to a lot of people that would give them even greater cause for hostility."

Engel agrees with Cleaver on only one thing -- Democrats need to improve their sales pitch.

"We have to do a better job of selling what we're doing," Engel told me. "We're not doing a good a job as we should. But I believe with all my heart that health care reform is imperative. And I believe if we do nothing, we're going to be in trouble down the road, with health care costs in this country."

Unlike Cleaver, Engel is more than willing to see health care passed with 218 votes in the House and 51 votes in the Senate.

"If Republican aren't going to want to cooperate and if they don't want to work with us, then we may have to go it alone and pass it with just Democratic votes. I would not prefer it, but the bottom line is if Republicans keep showing they are really not interested in working with us for health reform, then we may have to do it just with Democratic votes.

Engel said the situation reminds him of when former Republican Speaker of the House Denny Hastert used to say all he needed to bring legislation to the floor was "a majority of the majority."

"It's a valid approach if you have to have it," Engel said.

He also said Democrats won the last two elections handily because they promised big changes on health care.

"We've won big and one of the things that we said was that health care reform was one of the things we wanted to see. I think health care reform is essential for the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party mandate was in large part because we talked about health care reform."

Engel also disagrees with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and his serial condemnation of reporters for allegedly hyping administration signals about a possible pull-back from the public option.

"It was clear that (HHS) Secretary (Kathleen) Sebelius in her remarks was trying to look down the road to see the possible final bill that wouldn't have a public option," Engel said of Sebelius' remarks on CNN Sunday that the public option was not "an essential element" of health care reform. "And they're saying that they're not wedded to it as long as moves forward with health costs. A lot of people read into that that the White House was backing away from the public option."

Engel said Obama's since recommitted to the public option, as he did today in a town hall with Organizing for America volunteers and staff that was also streamed live across the country.

With that public option pledge, maybe liberal Democrats won't be so "we weed" up. In the meantime, Cleaver and Engel, loyal Democrats both, aren't the least bit "wee-weed" up. And though they see a different route to the health care promised land on this they absolutely agree: victory is more than a wee bit farther away than it was before the August recess.

URL

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cleavers-cut-and-engles-angle-on-health-care