Democrats Slam Brakes on Health Care Overhaul
WASHINGTON — With no clear path forward on major health care legislation, Democratic leaders in Congress effectively slammed the brakes on President Obama’s top domestic priority on Tuesday, saying that they no longer felt pressure to move quickly on a health bill after eight months of setting deadlines and missing them.
The New York Times
(5:30 P.M. EST)
I saw this and clicked on DKOS to catch the reaction. What am I missing? Is this not the end of HCR?
The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, deflected questions about health care. "We’re not on health care now," he said. "We’ve talked a lot about it in the past." He added, "There is no rush," and noted that Congress still had most of this year to work on the health bills passed in 2009 by the Senate and the House.
Are we not being told, in this story, that it's over? Finished? That HCR has joined the Choir Invisible?
The comments by lawmakers also served to lower expectations for the president’s State of the Union speech on Wednesday. Lawmakers said they did not expect Mr. Obama to lay out a specific strategy.
Surely I'm missing something.