Pelosi Pushed Obama to Back Comprehensive Reform

Worth Clicking: Blasts from the past wound Romney

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March 21, 2010

Pelosi Pushed Obama to Back Comprehensive Reform

The New York Times reports it was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who pushed President Obama to back comprehensive health care reform instead of a scaled back effort after Democrats lost their supermajority in the U.S. Senate in January.

"In a series of impassioned conversations, over the telephone and in the Oval Office, she conveyed her frustration to the president, according to four people familiar with the talks. If she and Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, were going to stick out their necks for Mr. Obama's top legislative priority, Ms. Pelosi wanted assurances that the president would too. At the White House, aides to Mr. Obama say, he also wanted assurances; he needed to hear that the leaders could pass his far-reaching plan."

Said Pelosi: "We're in the majority. We'll never have a better majority in your presidency in numbers than we've got right now. We can make this work."

Politico also reports that it was Pelosi who "made it clear she would accept nothing short of a big-bang health care push" -- dismissing an "incrementalist" plan pushed by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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March 21, 2010