NewsHour’s David Brooks and Mark Shields discuss President Obama’s speech on health care reform and what impact it will have on Congress.
Analyzing the President's address
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Tag Archives: health care
The lion sleeps tonight
With the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy, who will pick up for the Democrats where Kennedy left off in terms of the health care debate and other key economic issues?
Conventional wisdom (and the stock market) finds that Kennedy’s absence from the Senate floor will be a blow to the health care debate, but this NPR story suggests his passing could breathe new life into the battle.
The American Prospect opinion piece Ted Kennedy: Keeper of the Liberal Flame looks at the “liberal lion’s” contributions to policies like minimum wage and health care.
“This was a litany of causes soon to be lost, if they were not lost already. Industrial policy, jobs for the inner-city poor, universal health care — these were causes that the Democrats discarded in the years that followed. Kennedy maintained his hold on the party’s heart, but its head moved off to neo-land, to the more modest ambitions of a Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton. No one could stir the Democrats like Kennedy, but his speeches to conventions increasingly became affirmations of tribal allegiance, not outlines of the policy directions that the party would take.”
Kennedy discusses drug benefit changes to Medicare in this video from a 2003 interview with the NewsHour’s Ray Suarez.
And the WGBH program Greater Boston features contributions from Sen. Kennedy made to Massachusetts.
How do you think Kennedy’s death will change the debate over causes like minimum wage and health care?
Miss the press conference?
You can listen to President Obama’s press conference on health care reform from last night in its entirety at PRX. And Marketplace’s Tamara Keith gives an <a href="overview and analysis of the q&a session.
Going Public
Will a publicly-financed health care system be a further burden on the economy, or can President Obama get a bill passed that doesn’t increase the federal deficit?
President Obama discusses his health care reform initiative, bipartisanship and deadlines in an exclusive interview with NewsHour’s Jim Lehrer.
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The MediaBistro blog FishbowlDC reported that Lehrer was also doing his part to make a child feel better — by inviting a 17-year-old leukemia patient to a NewsHour taping.
At WNYC, a different Lehrer — Brian Lehrer of The Brian Lehrer Show — also focuses on health care reform and spoke with New York Congressman Charlie Rangel about whether he thinks a health care bill will be passed before Congress’ August recess.
But lobbyists are still at the center of the game. Marketplace looks at how any public plan could affect private insurers and drug companies, along with the people who pitch for them.
To form a more open government
This week, experts from across the political world came together to talk about open government – the idea that the web can help information flow through agencies to the media and everyday citizens who want to participate and have a say in making policy.
Last year at this time, everyone at the annual Personal Democracy Forum had one thing in mind – the 2008 presidential election. But did we miss the bigger picture? Was all the attention focused on the race causing policymakers to overlook looming problems in the markets? Would pushing the government to share more information online have made a difference in how we’re coping with the current economic crisis?
Recent projects inside the administration are making a start at helping people understand the dimensions of the economic recovery. The new White House IT Dashboard allows you to follow the impact of investments being made by various government agencies like the Department of Energy and the Department of Homeland Security.
But reports like this Capitol News Connection report about the large donations that finance executives have given to lawmakers highlight the closed-door status that special interests – and the finance industry in particular – continue to enjoy.
The public’s role in public media is also being leveraged in creative ways. Perhaps one of the best examples occurred last week when NPR asked their website visitors and Twitter followers to identify the lobbyists in the photo below, from a Senate hearing on health care.
The result? A post on NPR’s Dollar Politics blog and a clearer sense of who’s paying attention in Washington.