generally, and obama specifically, has about the way small businesses function and grow. this is i don t know that there is any debate more rooted in a philosophical divide between democrats and republicans than the desire for small business owners to get the federal government out of their business and out of their lives. a lot of these businesses are people s homes. we had neil ferguson a couple of weeks ago talking about starting a business and having to post health care regulations on his refrigerator. it s impossible for any of us who haven t started a small business in our homes to understand how burdensome the health care regulations are and the health care law specifically. we re going to talk about the politics of this a little later. david axelrod will be here. let s move now to the other big story. the countdown in egypt. morsi was given the deadline today. egypt close to boiling over. we have the count now at 23 people reported dead. president mohamed morsi is
system, and those things are going ahead whether the republicans like them or not, and the american public, it turns out, likes them. zeke just pointed out correctly he s not a republican strategist. i m not a very good one. i m working up to it. neither is carl although he just made a claim the other moment ago that this now took this off the table as a political issue. as far as i know, this is a one-year delay, which takes us into another election year in the middle of 2014. so is this off the table politically? will republicans not continue to stay on this issue heading into the midterm elections next year? listen, there are parts of this that are very popular that republicans would be well-served to be loudly in favor of, the coverage of preexisting ngs c conditioning, expanding access to health care, that s something republicans are for. it s the obama care the republicans are against. if president obama didn t have a
to be talking about it this morning. it s going to be front page in every newspaper in america. it s smart to do it. it takes it off the table in an election year. it says to business, we re not going to shove this down your throat. look, nobody is going to repeal this law. this law is here. it s not going away, and it needs to be perfected. the obama administration, in one area where it s been particularly smart, is in the economy, we re in a recovery, we don t want to alienate business, the people in the white house are saying. they ve taken a step that business is going to look favorably upon, and it s going to take this off the election table as well, and the republicans are mad as hell about it in their interest of politicizing everything into an election year issue. this one isn t going to work. nicole, is the fact that the law, as carl says, is here to say, whatever the republican
of a systemic failure. today s announcement that the obama administration officials are delaying implementation of a key aspect of the president s unprecedented federal government intrusion into our health care system is further proof that the law rushed through the legislative process is fundamentally flawed. and in the washington post, the regulatory solution reflects the fact that the legislative process around the health care law is completely broken. republicans won t pass any legislation that makes the law work better. improving the law, they fear, will weaken the arguments for repeal. so congress is at a standstill with no viable process for reforming or repairing the bill. the white house is on its own. the affordable care act as problems arise. the white house delay might be better policy, but the way the delay was passed is part of a deeply broken process. ezra normally likes the
advantages see in attacking it, as they did with president bush s prescription drug plan, work with the white house to try to improve it. let me just, with all due respect, i beg to differ. the recovery is still largely a jobless one, and the unemployment rate is ticking down only because people are opting out of the work force. that part you re absolutely right about. the notion that our recovery is under way, the obama administration has to understand on some level that small business owners are the key to the recovery becoming a recovery in which people actually go back to work. this never affected small business. if they re hampered zeke is absolutely right. that s the point. this never affected small business. this is a nonargument. the law is going to be implemented, as carl says, should republicans sit down with the president and say, let s try to figure out how to improve it. as all major pieces of legislation require. i think people in both parties should a