Health reform wouldn’t have passed without the efforts of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a veteran journalist who covered the debate said Tuesday night.
Eleanor Clift, a contributing editor for Newsweek, said that Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, is one of the few Washington, D.C. officials who can be counted on to do what they say they will do. She said Pelosi, a 17-year congressional veteran, “came to the rescue” after Republican Scott Brown’s election to the U.S. Senate threatened to derail the reform legislation.
“In that 17 years, she really learned how to navigate that old boys club,” Clift said at the annual dinner for the Center for Practical Bioethics, a nonprofit organization based in Kansas City, Mo.
Clift said that Pelosi’s role in getting the health reform bill passed will “put her in the history books.”
Eleanor Clift
Clift, a regular panelist on the syndicated talk show, “The McLaughlin Group,” said President Obama’s patience and his ability to weather criticism from liberal Democrats who wanted a larger role for the federal government in the reform plan were critical to him succeeding where other presidents had failed.
“He avoided burning any bridges along the way,” she said, adding that Obama’s desire for bipartisanship is “authentic.”
“It’s not a political ploy,” she said.
Clift said Republicans may regain control of the House in this year’s mid-term elections. But she predicted that Democrats will retain enough seats to prevent a GOP majority from repealing the new health reform law. She also predicted many elements of the law would become more popular with the public once they take effect.
“It will be very hard to go back to saying that children with pre-existing conditions can’t be on their parents’ health policies,” she said.