The White House Blog

Reaching Across the Aisle on Jobs and Health Reform

Following up on the unique conversation the President held with House Republicans at their retreat, the President invited bipartisan leadership from Congress to the White House to discuss job creation and the economy.  Making a surprise appearance at the daily press briefing afterwards, the President relayed some thoughts on the meeting:

THE PRESIDENT:  ...And at this critical time in our country, the people sent us here expect a seriousness of purpose that transcends petty politics.  That's why I'm going to continue to seek the best ideas from either party as we work to tackle the pressing challenges ahead.  I am confident, for example, that when one in 10 of our fellow citizens can't work, we should be able to come together and help business create more jobs.  We ought to be able to agree on providing small businesses with additional tax credits and much needed lines of credit.  We ought to agree on investments in crumbling roads and bridges, and we should agree on tax breaks for making homes more energy-efficient -- all of which will put more Americans to work.  Many of the job proposals that I've laid out have passed the House and are soon going to be debated in the Senate.  We spent a lot of time in this meeting discussing a jobs package and how we could move forward on that.  And if there are additional ideas, I will consider them as well.  What I won't consider is doing nothing in the face of a lot of hardship across the country.

This meeting was also in advance of a bipartisan summit on health reform that the President convened for February 25th.  This meeting has already garnered significant attention, with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs making clear that while the meeting is very much about inviting valuable ideas from Republicans, it is by no means about backing away from the challenges facing the American people.  The President laid out his expectations for a constructive conversation:

Q    After meeting with you, John Boehner came out and told us, "The House can't pass the health care bill it once passed; the Senate can't pass the health care bill it once passed.  Why would we have a conversation about legislation that can't pass?"  As a part of that, he said you and your White House and congressional Democrats should start over entirely from scratch on health care reform.  How do you respond?  Are you willing to do that?

 

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, here's how I responded to John in the meeting, and I've said this publicly before.  There are some core goals that have to be met.  We've got to control costs, both for families and businesses, but also for our government.  Everybody out there who talks about deficits has to acknowledge that the single biggest driver of our deficits is health care spending.  We cannot deal with our deficits and debt long term unless we get a handle on that.  So that has to be part of a package.

Number two, we've got to deal with insurance abuses that affect millions of Americans who've got health insurance.  And number three, we've got to make health insurance more available to folks in the individual market, as I just mentioned, in California, who are suddenly seeing their premiums go up 39 percent.  That applies to the majority of small businesses, as well as sole proprietors.  They are struggling.

So I've got these goals.  Now, we have a package, as we work through the differences between the House and the Senate, and we'll put it up on a Web site for all to see over a long period of time, that meets those criteria, meets those goals.  But when I was in Baltimore talking to the House Republicans, they indicated, we can accomplish some of these goals at no cost.  And I said, great, let me see it.  And I have no interest in doing something that's more expensive and harder to accomplish if somebody else has an easier way to do it.

So I'm going to be starting from scratch in the sense that I will be open to any ideas that help promote these goals.  What I will not do, what I don't think makes sense and I don't think the American people want to see, would be another year of partisan wrangling around these issues; another six months or eight months or nine months worth of hearings in every single committee in the House and the Senate in which there's a lot of posturing.  Let's get the relevant parties together; let's put the best ideas on the table.  My hope is that we can find enough overlap that we can say this is the right way to move forward, even if I don't get every single thing that I want.

But here's the point that I made to John Boehner and Mitch McConnell:  Bipartisanship can't be that I agree to all the things that they believe in or want, and they agree to none of the things I believe in and want, and that's the price of bipartisanship, right?  But that's sometimes the way it gets presented.  Mitch McConnell said something very nice in the meeting about how he supports our goals on nuclear energy and clean coal technology and more drilling to increase oil production.  Well, of course he likes that; that's part of the Republican agenda for energy, which I accept.  And I'm willing to move off some of the preferences of my party in order to meet them halfway.  But there's got to be some give from their side as well.  That's true on health care; that's true on energy; that's true on financial reform.  That's what I'm hoping gets accomplished at the summit.

Making Moves for a Healthier Generation

"It’s done, honey," President Obama said to The First Lady earlier today as he signed a Presidential Memorandum establishing a task force on childhood obesity to address the growing health epidemic. "Now we work," she responded.
 
The new task force is charged with developing an interagency action plan to solve the problem of obesity among our Nation's children as part of the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign. The campaign will take a comprehensive approach to engage both public and private sectors to help children become more active and eat healthier within a generation, so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight. 

President Barack Obama signs a memorandum on childhood obesity in the Oval Office. From left are, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, First Lady Michelle Obama, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar February 9, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton)

Within 90 days, the task force will develop and submit to the President a comprehensive interagency plan that details a coordinated strategy, identifies key benchmarks, and outlines an action plan.  The President applauded all those involved:

I am so proud of the work that the First Lady, along with the Cabinet Secretaries behind me, has done in trying to tackle one of the most urgent health issues that we face in this country, and that is the increase of childhood obesity. And because of the outstanding planning that they've done, they are going to be rolling out a terrific plan of action that involves the private sector as well as government agencies coordinating much more effectively a lot of public information out there to help parents make good decisions about allowing their children to be active and eating healthier.

Members of the task force include: the Secretary of the Interior; the Secretary of Agriculture; Secretary of Health and Human Services; Secretary of Education; Director of the Office of Management and Budget; Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady; Assistant to the President for Economic Policy; and heads of other executive departments, agencies, or offices as the Chair may designate.

Speaking at an event later, the First Lady explained what motivated her to take this on: "These words – 'overweight' and 'obese' – they don’t tell the full story.  This isn’t just about inches and pounds or how our kids look.  It’s about how our kids feel, and how they feel about themselves.  It’s about the impact we’re seeing on every aspect of their lives."

You'll find lots more information, such as the introductory video below, at LetsMove.gov.

Evolving the Open Government Dashboard with You

Countless entrepreneurs have taught us that the key to success is to execute quickly, seek feedback from the market, and iterate.  We have taken this lesson to heart and think it especially apt in our work to increase transparency, participation, and collaboration in government.  Therefore it is with great pleasure that – after just 60 days - U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra and I unveil what we call Version 1.0 of the Open Government Dashboard and look forward to building it together with all of you.  By way of this blog post, we hope to tell you a little bit about what we’ve done so far and what to expect in the weeks ahead.

Version 1.0 of the Dashboard focuses on agency execution of the deliverables explicitly identified in the Open Government Directive.  It makes it easy for the American people to visually track progress on the deadlines to date.  The Dashboard also links to each agency's Open Government Webpage, where the public can find more details on the steps taken to implement the Directive. Just look for the words "Evaluating our Progress."

The next big step will be to evaluate the agencies' Open Government Plans, due April 7^th.  Whereas the indicators have been largely binary thus far (e.g. Do you have an Open Government Webpage?), the Plans present a special opportunity for the Dashboard to evolve over time and empower the public while spurring a race to the top amongst agencies. We share your feedback that the agency plans are the most consequential deliverable required by the Directive, as they promise to hardwire greater transparency, participation, and collaboration into the culture of every agency. As such, the Open Government Working Group is preparing a set of "stretch criteria" to help evaluate the plans and celebrate those agencies that exceed the minimal requirements of the Directive to reflect the President's vision of openness and accountability as articulated in the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government. We are eager to seek your input in this process, so keep an eye out for opportunities to weigh in over the next two weeks.

After agencies have successfully delivered on the demanding deadlines set out for the first 120 days, Version 2.0 of the Dashboard can deploy a more holistic set of metrics, informed by agency Plans.  Identifying the right set of metrics will help steer agencies toward high-impact efforts in the years to come.  Some of you have already shared your thoughts with us and we look forward to hearing from may more of you in the coming months.

Thank you for helping us make this a success.
 
Aneesh Chopra is U.S. Chief Technology Officer

Gibbs Responds to Boehner, Cantor

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs just responded to a letter sent today from House Republican Leader John Boehner and House Republican Whip Eric Cantor regarding the proposed bipartisan health care summit:

The President is adamant that we seize this historic moment to pass meaningful health insurance reform legislation. He began this process by inviting Republican and Democratic leaders to the White House on March 5 of last year, and he’s continued to work with both parties in crafting the best possible bill. He’s been very clear about his support for the House and Senate bills because of what they achieve for the American people: putting a stop to insurance company abuses, extending coverage to millions of hardworking Americans, getting control of rising premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and reducing the deficit.

The President looks forward to reviewing Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out at the beginning of this process, and as recently as the State of the Union Address. He’s open to including any good ideas that stand up to objective scrutiny. What he will not do, however, is walk away from reform and the millions of American families and small business counting on it. The recent news that a major insurer plans to raise premiums for some customers by as much as 39 percent is a stark reminder of the consequences of doing nothing.

Read HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' letter to Anthem Blue Cross calling on them to publicly justify their extreme premium hikes at the same time their parent company sees soaring profits.