more george w. bush in style in thinking about the world in terms ever being engaged with global affairs? or will it move continually as it has been in this bannon direction some this is a choice the president himself has to make and he hasn t fully articulated where he want to go. the first votes on repealing and replacing bill clinton could be thursday but major hang-ups with republican leaders and right wing house members. senator ted cruz went to mar-a-lago this week with mike lee and mark meadows to hash out differences. before the president went to florida for the weekend he met with republican house members and said that negotiations were moving along nicely. it was an amazing meeting because they were all no s, would you say, mike? they were all no s or pretty much no. and after 15 minutes. now in all a fairness it s not 15 minutes after four or five days but after 15 minutes, they went from no to all yes s.
no s in congress, you saw in a while ago and went from all no s to all yeses and we have a lot of yeses coming in. it s all coming together. sounds pretty optimistic there. we see trump, the deal maker here, tom? sure. i mean, this is his strength, right? going into these meetings, you know, one thing that i think a lot of people around capitol hill give him credit for, yeah, there s been quite a few stumbles in the past 50 days or so since he took office, but one thing he s very good at is this direct personal lobbying and bringing them into the white house, it s something barack obama did not used to do and trump is doing in spades right now. whether or not these were 12 definitive no s, that s up to question. our reports indicate it was a soft no but he got them to yes. he s building toward this number he needs and building up to 216
government insurance program that would have competed with private companies. we ended up having to wrestle this thing to the ground in a way that was less than ideal from my perspective. finally, march 21, 2010. on this vote, the yes, 219, no s, 212. the motion to concur in the senate amendment is adopted. for decades they have been trying to do it. it has now been done. without a single republican vote the bill passed. the white house celebrated. i asked the president how does this night compare to election night? and he said there was no comparison. election night was all about getting to tonight. this was why we worked so hard. days later when president obama arrived in the east room to sign the bill into law, vice president joe biden summed up the moment. and a big bet that paid off. of course the repubcans vowed to keep fighting. we are resolved to have this
other? to understand why, you have to go back to the beginning of this story. chicago. 2002. when i look out over this crowd today i know there is no shortage of patriots or patriotism. all we are saying a little-known illinois state senator spoke at a protest against the bush administration s plans for a war in iraq. i don t oppose war in all circumstances, what i do oppose is a dumb war. that speech in 2002 is why barack obama became president. the eyes. nine days later, hillary clinton and 76 other senators. the joint resolution is passed. voted to give president bush the authority to go to war in iraq. it is a vote that says clearly to saddam hussein, this is your last chance, disarm or
a seat at the table. he wanted the very groups that had killed health care reform in the past inside the room now. in march, 2009, he brought them all to the white house. we kept every one of those but one at the table. all of the groups here need to stay involved. they all made demands. obama made deals. none of these groups are doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they re negotiating, they want to best deal possible. he compromised on the thing that was most sacred to him. the individual mandate that every citizen buy health care. the idealistic candidate had become a steely-eyed pragmatacist. you get the feeling they re trying to design it for a government takeover. but by august recess there was no vote. capitol hill lawmakers went home