President Obama postponed his overseas trip and continued working on reluctant lawmakers in an effort to show momentum for a far-from-certain vote on his health care plan.
Plying the phones and the persuasive atmosphere of the Oval Office, Obama was reaching out to more than two dozen members of Congress in an effort to secure passage of his signature issue.
His trip to Indonesia, Guam and Australia, already delayed once in the service of health care, will now be postponed most likely until June. Obama was to have left Sunday — the same day the House is expected to consider his reform measure.
While votes remained uncertain from a handful of Democratic House members, the administration believed they picked up some momentum from a Congressional Budget Office estimate showing the bill would cost $940 billion over 10 years and cut the deficit by $130 billion over the same time frame through increased taxes and cuts to Medicare.
“The president still believes we will have the votes,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
At the same time, the spokesman refused to be pinned down on the president’s view of “deem and pass,” a parliamentary move Democratic House leaders are contemplating to pass health care reform without a vote.
Obama, who taught constitutional law before he entered politics, also sidestepped the question in a contentious interview with Fox News, dismissing debate over the move as a “procedural” matter.
If the bill clears the House without a vote, Obama plans to sign it, Gibbs said. The White House also shrugged off the Fox News interview with a few words from Gibbs instructing journalists they should always let the president finish his answers.
Still, Obama’s handling of the health care debate appears to have hurt his standing with the public. A new poll by the Pew Center for the People & the Press found that for the first time, nearly as many people disapprove of his job performance than approve.
The poll found 43 percent disapprove of Obama, to 46 percent who approve. Worse still, 38 percent said they favor the health care bill, to 48 percent who oppose that.
That means that Obama’s big push for votes on health care forces recalcitrant Democrats to vote for an unpopular measure on behalf of a president with dwindling public support — a tough sell, and especially in an election year.
“It’s pretty clear that Democrat leaders here in Congress and the president aren’t listening to the American people,” said House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio. “The American people are saying, ‘stop!’ and they’re screaming at the top of their lungs.”
Gibbs denied reports that Obama threatened reluctant Democrats that he wouldn’t campaign for them in the fall if they ducked him on health care.
But Gibbs sidestepped whether or not Obama has been telling lawmakers that the future of his presidency rides on the vote, as has been reported, saying, “I have not asked him.”
