Rahm Pushes Health Care Forward, No Stepping Back

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Wednesday November 19, 2008 · 9:34 AM PST

2008/11/19 · 09:34

Here's some great news for those of us who are hoping that Obama moves quickly and ambitiously on health care reform:

Rahm Emanuel, speaking to a Wall Street Journal event, suggested that Obama would use the current economic crisis to go big on a range of issues, in this order: healthcare, energy, education, financial regulation and tax policy.

"Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long term, now are immediate and must be dealt with,"

Rahm Emanuel is right...the only way to get the economy truly moving again is to create jobs that won't be outsourced. That means that our infrastructure needs building and updating. If we don't invest in these things now we'll fall even further behind the rest of the world who are already much further ahead of us on all of these domestic fronts.

The fact that Rahm Emanuel himself is setting the bar very high for the incoming administration's expected health care reform, among other major issues is welcome.

Unfortunately, the video of Emanuel's speech will not embed on DKOS, but here is a link to the WSJ's video of Rahm Emanuel speaking on these issues.
http://online.wsj.com/...

"When it gets rough out there, a lot of business leaders get out of the car and say, 'We're OK with minor reform.' I'm challenging you today, we're going to have to do big, serious things,"

Rahm Emanuel said, speaking to The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council, a conference convened to elicit corporate opinion on the challenges facing the new president.

I thought for sure that maybe a week after the election we might be subject to hearing a series of throat-clearing, step back statements meant to lower expectations. Instead, even the usual obstructionists are sounding a note of more aggressive reform or at least being conciliatory. When you only have 40 (R) Senators, you start listening and stop blocking, I guess. This is indeed good news. Not a sure thing yet by any stretch of the imagination, but a good start nonetheless.

Crisis creates opportunity for big change. President Elect Obama gets this.

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