President Barack Obama responded to Thursday's news that the Senate would not be considering health care legislation before the August deadline by de-emphasizing the importance of the deadline.
Speaking at a town hall in Cleveland, Ohio, the president insisted that his interest in the legislative process is to ensure that progress is being made, not that arbitrary timeframes were being met.
"We just heard today that well, we may not be able to get the bill out of the Senate by the end of August or the beginning of August," said Obama. "That's OK. I just want people to keep on working. Just keep working. I want the bill to get out of the committees, and then I want that bill to go to the floor, and then I want that bill to be reconciled between the House and the Senate, and then I want to sign a bill. And I want it done by the end of this year. I want it done by the fall."
The fall time frame is in line with what the president has said in the past. But, even during his press conference on Wednesday night, Obama was touting the August recess deadline as a useful tool for spurring congressional action. Publicly, officials close to the White House and in Congress insist that the prospects of reform remain unchanged. And in the hours after it was announced that the Senate would not be voting on a final product until after Congress returned from its break, the Democratic National Committee was already out with a television ad stressing the need of reform.
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But were Thursday's developments all that bad for Democrats? The conventional wisdom among party operatives is that it's a political hit for the president, even if it was somewhat expected that the deadline would be missed. That said, days before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Senate would vote on a bill only after recess, a prominent strategist with ties to leadership and the White House made the case that missing the deadline would actually be politically beneficial.
"Why push for the bills to be done before the recess?" the strategist asked. "It just means that Republicans will have three straight weeks to rail against it and rally opposition. Plus, it will be harder to be on the defense with all the members back in their districts."