slips maybe before the easter recess, that break, we have seen this before, and this is something that is very consistent and white house strategy, because they feel like nothing will get done unless the press pushes lawmakers before deadlines that have come and gone, that was the august recess as well as the end of last year, and that s why we saw the senate get that version of health care reform passed on christmas eve. since this has come about, there has been numerous meetings between the president, his chief of staff, rahm emanuel, as well as the democratic leadership and the message to the administration has been just back off a little and give us more time here, and this is not helpful, the march 18th deadline, and not surprising we have seen flexibility from the administration. take a listen. our hope is to get this done as soon as possible. if it takes a couple extra days after a year it takes a couple extra days.
we did let dennis miller loose on him yesterday. again, it is not an important story. but afghanistan is important. coming up in a few moments, sally quinn will also analyze congressman kennedy s remarks. that s the memo. now for the top story tonight. it s been widely reported that the white house told white house speaker nancy pelosi to have the health care vote finished by march 18th, next week. mrs. plot apparently told rahm emanuel, obama s chief of staff knock it off she doesn t want any deadline. joining us now with analysis radio talk show star laura ingraham. what do you think is going on here. late today robert gibbs said we are not going to hold the march 18th deadline. of course they are not. bill: what s going on. here is what we know. if nancy pelosi had the votes, there would be a vote. bill: tomorrow. the second she has the votes for this health care bill, she is going to schedule a vote. right now she doesn t have the votes. okay. there are so many different
interesting that you brought up the fact he is bringing his family with him. one of our colleagues asked in that way, is this more vacation than a serious trip? robert seemed to bristle at that. but you re hearing from democrats on capitol hill saying, hey, don t make your deadline a vacation deadline? you heard steny hoyer and speaker pelosi have both pretty sharply pushed back on this march 18th deadline. what is happening behind closed doors is really a furious sentiment from some house democrats that they feel they re being pushed too much on this. some of them, of course, want the vote to happen sooner rather than later to get it over with. others feel this deadline is more about the president s schedule, and it s not the most pressing foreign trip that he s had since taking office. so right now, they say they re
mr. gibbs did. but apparently, nobody else did. listen to this little sound bite. here s nancy pelosi. the march 18th is an interesting date. it may take longer. and we will we will take up the bill when we re ready to take up the bill. what does that mean? we will take up the bill when we are ready to take up the bill. i mean, march 18th is gone, right? the president is about to go away on an overseas trip. is there any hope that this latest deadline is going to be met? i was going to say, what has been interesting is that since last august, right, we ve had a deadline almost every holiday has been a deadline. now they have this march 18th deadline. she s signaled she s not going to be able to necessarily get it done by then. it could be that she s trying to lower expectations and will get it done on the 18th but it seems unlikely given what s happened lately. what do you think has to be
first of all, the black caucus has a couple of points of conflict with the president apart from health care. one has to do with the war in afghanistan. they are very upset with the way that is going forward. the other has to do with some of what they perceive as snubs from the white house to the caucus, some vitriolic back and forth between west wing leaders and senior members of the black caucus. you re right. two things, tamron, we did not officially but everybody assumed had become official in the last 30 minutes here in washington. number one, robert gibbs, white house secretary briefing right now told reporters that march 18th deadline that he first put forward on msnbc about a week ago, it could slip a couple of days. everybody sort of knew that even though the white house expressed an interest in having a vote in the house of representatives, by the time the president left on his trip to southeast asia and australia, it wasn t going to happen. if you look at the calendar it s al