Obama to push health plan at joint session

Trying to resuscitate his push for a health care overhaul, President Obama has decided to address a rare joint session of Congress next week and make a revamped argument for passage of an evolving plan that has riled the nation and brought down his approval ratings for the past two months.

The White House on Wednesday said Mr. Obama would head to Capitol Hill on Sept. 9 to speak to lawmakers in prime time upon their return from a monthlong vacation that was highlighted by heated town-hall meetings on health care. Top advisers to the president promised that Mr. Obama would give more detailed direction to Congress, after months of only general guidance.

Though David Axelrod, top adviser to the president, said Mr. Obama still “embraces” a government-run “public option” for health insurance, which combined with the plan’s price tag has fueled much of the public blowback, the president was not expected to insist that it be part of any final plan. The White House has declined for weeks to be pinned down on the controversial government-run component embraced by the Democratic Party’s liberal base, saying only that Mr. Obama’s priority is a reform that increases competition in the health insurance industry and choice for consumers.

Next week’s direct address — a rarity that has occurred outside of State of the Union speeches only once in each of the past two presidencies — raises the stakes in a fight that has bloodied the young administration more than many had expected. But it also signals the seriousness and urgency with which the president and his advisers view the issue.

Mr. Axelrod said the speech would be “the kickoff to the final push to get this done” and promised that Mr. Obama would “address the issue with force and clarity.”

“The path that he believes we should go will be clear to everyone who hears this speech. I don’t think anybody will leave Wednesday night without a clear sense of what he proposes and what health care reform is not,” said Mr. Axelrod, speaking to a small group of reporters at the White House.

Three of the past four presidents have delivered one speech each to joint sessions of Congress. President George W. Bush did it Sept. 20, 2001, in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. President Reagan did it Nov. 21, 1985, after returning from a summit in Geneva with Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev on the topic of nuclear arms reduction.

But Mr. Obama’s speech bears a resemblance to President Clinton’s address on Sept. 22, 1993. The topic of that speech, given in Mr. Clinton’s first year, was also health care reform.

The prospect of failure has haunted the Obama reform effort from the beginning, and much of the administration’s strategy has been an attempt to learn the lessons of collapse under Mr. Clinton and to avoid the mistakes that led to it. But some are beginning to fear that history is repeating itself.

The White House has had a difficult two months in which public support for the president’s health care reforms and his overall job approval fell.

Town-hall meetings filled with angry constituents dominated the news for weeks in August. Those opposed to the president’s plan harangued and sometimes shouted down members of Congress and at least one Cabinet member.

Mr. Axelrod acknowledged that the White House has “taken some dings.”

“There’s no doubt this has been a vituperative debate,” he said, but added that “this conventional thinking that somehow the bottom fell out in August, no I don’t accept that.”

Julius Hobson, a senior policy adviser at international law firm Bryan Cave LLP, said Mr. Obama’s speech “raises the stakes substantially” for the president.

Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank, said it was a good idea for Mr. Obama to speak to a joint session.

Story Continues →