Democratic leaders in Washington plan to spend the next week doing what they all but refused to do during the 2010 midterm elections: mount a vigorous defense of President Obama’s health care legislation.The “all fronts” plan is a response to the decision by the new House speaker, John A. Boehner, to schedule a vote next Wednesday on a complete repeal of the health care law that Mr. Obama signed last March.
Senior Democratic officials said their effort will be managed by a rapid response operation modeled after the ones Mr. Obama used during his presidential campaign. That team will monitor Republican claims, send out fact-checks and deploy a team of surrogates to get their views on television.
Paid television advertisements will be run “as warrants,” said one senior Democrat, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the program. Organizing for America, the president’s chief political apparatus, will host phone banks and will schedule events featuring people who would lose their benefits if the health care law were repealed.
“We will make clear to the American people, that as their first order of business, Republicans have decided not to focus on jobs and deficit reduction, but on re-litigating partisan battles — that, if successful, would eliminate help for our job-creating small business and explode the deficit,” said Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.
Earlier in the week, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader, vowed passage of what the Republicans have dubbed “Repealing the Job Killing Health Care Act.”
“The American people are expecting quick action from the Republican majority,” Mr. Cantor told reporters Tuesday. He downplayed predictions that the act would be stopped by the Democratic majority in the Senate, saying, “the important thing right now is to make sure we send a repeal bill across the floor.”
The president and his allies on Capitol Hill were criticized by liberals for failing to defend the health care legislation during the campaign. Democratic candidates rarely mounted a fiery defense of the law on the campaign trail. And some even ran ads against the legislation, fearful that Republicans had succeeded in turning the public against it.
But Democrats have concluded that the current situation is different. On the campaign trail, they say, Democratic candidates had to speculate about what Republicans might do if they got elected. Now, the repeal vote puts a big target on Mr. Boehner’s back, they said.
“We’re not talking about benefits which you may get down the road,” Mr. Sevugan said. “We are talking about taking away benefits you enjoy right now — tangible benefits with value. This puts us on offense.”
The initial volleys of the effort came even before Mr. Boehner was sworn in on Wednesday. In a mass e-mail message to the president’s supporters, Mitch Stewart, the director of Organizing for America, urged people to speak out.
“Organizing for America is pulling together a team of organizers and volunteers to defend reform — and we need you on this team,” Mr. Stewart wrote. “Together, we’ll show how our progress is already improving lives across the country — and take on those who are pushing for repeal.”
And three cabinet secretaries— Kathleen Sebelius, of health and human services; Hilda L. Solis, of labor; and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner — sent a letter to members of Congress on Wednesday, saying that a repeal would “set the nation back on a path to higher costs and skyrocketing premiums, less competition and fewer consumer protections.”
Mr. Obama’s own role in the effort is unclear. During his briefing with reporters on Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said that Republicans know the repeal will not succeed in the Senate and called it “a bit of huff and puff” that is mostly symbolic. But he also said that a repeal would take the country back to “a health care system where insurance companies are in charge and call the shots.” Asked whether Mr. Obama would be making a major speech to that effect, however, Mr. Gibbs said no.
“Obviously the president is focused very much on the economy and on the job situation right now. He’s remarkably proud of the accomplishment of health care,” Mr. Gibbs said. “I don’t think that the American people want to go back to a health care system where those safety nets are in doubt, and that’s what the law is.”
Recent polling suggests that most Americans remain divided over the health care law and what — if anything — should be done about it now.
In a national poll conducted last month for the Kaiser Family Foundation, a fifth of the public said the new health reform law should be left as it is; another fifth said the law should be expanded. A quarter of those surveyed said lawmakers should repeal parts of the health reform law, and another quarter said the entire law should be repealed.
About half of the adults surveyed by ABC News and The Washington Post last month said they opposed the changes to the health care system that were enacted by Congress and the administration. Of these people, three in 10 said the health care reform law should be repealed altogether and another three in 10 said part of the law should be repealed. About four in 10 said the best approach was to “wait and see before deciding.”
In her final remarks as speaker before literally handing over the gavel to Mr. Boehner, Nancy Pelosi of California used the spotlight to highlight the benefits of the health care legislation. Her pointed message: these are the things Republicans want to take away.
And, she said, the legislation was designed by Democrats to reduce federal health care spending. “Taken together,” she said, “it will save taxpayers $1.3 trillion.”
Republicans have spent the better part of a year hammering against those arguments, with very little response. Now, Democrats promise at least a week of fighting back.
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