Stakes high for Democrats with health bill in Congress
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The table stakes are high for the U.S. president who is figuring the betting odds in the ongoing round of poker game in the legislature.
The crux is how much more he could fish out of his pocket to keep himself and his backers by the tableside to play on and win.
It is true that passing through Congress the health care reform bill would boost voter confidence with the Democrats, failing to get the bill through will deal a hefty blow to the majority party and may even turn the tables.
"If they fail to pass, they will have this blot on them for not only supporting something that many people seem to see as unpopular, but also they will appear to be incompetent and unable to govern," said Stephen Weber, chief operating officer at the Program on International Policy Attitudes.
The Democrats' popularity is already suffering from public angst over the worst economic scenario since the 1930s, which alone could cost them seats in November's mid-term elections.
Health care reforms have become another hot-button issue for congressional bickering that has not only grabbed headlines across the country but tended to drift the favor further away from the Democrats.
Despite the fact that opponents of President Barack Obama's health care plan currently comprise a slight majority of the public, most Americans still aspire to have some type of health care reform to keep costs down and expand access for millions of the uninsured.
"Congressional Democrats have already paid a price on health care, so they need to get a bill into law so they can go home and talk about the good things that the new law will do," commented Scott Payne, senior policy advisor at Third Way.
"Right now, they have spent political capital, but have very little to show for it (its returns)."
Some pundits feared that gambling on a bill's passage could distract the administration from the need to brighten up the nation's bleak employment picture.
"Obama's decision to pursue health care is going to make his administration's attempt to focus on jobs much more difficult," said John Fortier, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
"We will be talking about health care for the next four to six weeks or more," he said. "The message of jobs will be at best diluted if not forgotten in this time."
The president is already losing the support of many moderate voters, partly because they see his efforts on health care as a distraction decoy from the country's economic woes, Fortier said.
But some alienated themselves from the sentiment.
"Congress has to walk and chew gum at the same time and has the capacity to do so," said Payne, the Third Way advisor.
"There is a lot of public pressure to create jobs, so you'll likely see some Senate Republicans continue to vote for job creation bills introduced by Democrats," he added.
President Obama encouraged congressional Democrats to pass health care bill within the next few weeks, asserting a bill's passage will not hurt the party in the mid-term elections.
But Obama's encouragement disclosed the wobbly support from some Democrats whom the administration has to urge to endorse the health care plan already approved by the Senate in December.
The more thoughtful still has another scenario.
Weber of the Program on International Policy Attitudes said the health care reform, even if it passes through, will continue to be unpopular with Americans identifying themselves as Republicans.
Weber's concern was reflected in a Gallup poll that found 45 percent of respondents to be for and 48 percent against Obama's health care plan, and the opponents showed a growing sentiment that the bill would raise costs and not redress the real problems.
Slightly more Americans said they would advise their members of Congress to vote against a health care reform bill similar to the one the president has proposed, the poll released Wednesday found.
But the poll also found that opponents who were against the legislation were not against health care reforms in general, although they disagreed with the current bill's approach.
The Third Way senior policy advisor, Payne, said that passing health care reform is no guarantee that mid-term elections will work out in Democrats' favor, as the economy will still continue to play a major role in voters' decisions.
"Even with a health care bill, a struggling economy is always bad for incumbents," Payne said.
Sure enough, if the economy fails to show signs of turnaround by summer and is still trying to claw itself out of the pit of recession, Democrats could feel the sting of public dissatisfaction, some economists stated.
The unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent as the previous month, and the number of long-term unemployed -- those who remain jobless after more than six months -- holds at 6.1 million, though the number declined slightly from the previous month.
Economists predict that a drop in unemployment by summer could mildly help Democrats. But the natural tendency to vote against the party in power, plus the probability that the economy will remain sluggish for still some time, is likely to lead to Democrats losing some of their congressional seats.
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