US President Barack Obama Thursday sharply warned lawmakers, including those in his Democratic Party, that they must answer to voters if they balk at passing his long-delayed health reforms.
Obama, seeking to reinvigorate his ambitious change agenda in a treacherous political year, said that a jobs bill should take priority in Congress, but then lawmakers must get back to his stalled health legislation.
“We have to move forward on a vote,” Obama said, adding that he was prepared to sit down with Democratic and Republican lawmakers and health experts to work out what would work and what could pass.
But he warned, apparently especially referring to majority Democrats, that if a bill did not pass, they would have to explain why voters were deprived of what he says is improved access to health care and lower insurance costs.
“If Congress decides we are not going to do it … then the American people can make a judgement as to whether Congress has done the right thing for them or not,” Obama told members of his Organizing for America grass roots operation.
“There will be elections coming up,” Obama said, referring to mid-term congressional polls in November, adding that voters “will be able to make a determination and register their concerns one way or the other — that’s how democracy works.”
Though Democrats have large majorities in Congress, the loss of liberal icon Edward Kennedy’s former Senate seat in Massachusetts last month stripped away their 60-seat Senate supermajority.
This means Senate Republicans can frustrate or thwart Democratic efforts to pass bills through filibuster delaying and obstruction tactics.
Democrats have several options to merge rival bills that have passed the House and Senate, but each one poses substantial political risks, on legislation which polls show is now largely unpopular with the public.
