White House press secretary Robert Gibbs is ratcheting up the pressure on Congress to complete health-care legislation, setting March 18 as the deadline by which a final bill should be passed.
Noting that President Obama leaves that day on a trip to Indonesia, Guam and Australia, Gibbs said on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown” with Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie that “we believe that we’re on schedule, based on our conversations with the speaker and the majority leader, to get something done by then.”
The White House deadline means Congress would have exactly two weeks to pass a version of the existing Senate-approved bill in the House of Representatives and then pass a second bill filled with “fixes” in both chambers.
Gibbs modified his statement hours later, in his daily briefing for reporters, saying that the bill was “on schedule to get this through the House by then.” He did not address the bill’s fate in the Senate.
Back a few years, the one term county manager in the county I lived in issued a glaring threat in the local paper. The region had been hit by a massive ice storm and a full 50% of my utility company’s lines were down on the ground. Good old Ralphie got a headline demanding that the power be restored immediately “or else”.
What the “or else” was didn’t exactly get stipulated.
We got the power back on as soon as we were able given the immense damage.
He lost the next election in a landslide.
I really, really doubt the Emerald House staff munchkins will get this, but there is a lesson in that story.
They want to get this passed before congress goes home on Easter break and gets their a**es chewed off by the voters. If the house passes the senate bill Zero will sign it.