Obama Gains Vindication and Secures Legacy With Health Care Ruling
WASHINGTON — For years, President Obama has faced the sneers of political adversaries who called his health care law
Obamacare and assailed his effort to build a legacy that has been the
aspiration of every Democratic president since Harry S. Truman.
But
on Thursday, Mr. Obama walked into the Rose Garden to accept
vindication as the Supreme Court, for a second time, affirmed the
legality of a part of the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Obama said the law
“is working exactly as it’s supposed to” and called for an end to the
vitriolic politics that have threatened it.
“The
point is, this is not an abstract thing anymore,” Mr. Obama told
reporters, with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. smiling broadly
beside him. “This is not a set of political talking points. For all the
misinformation campaigns, all the doomsday predictions, all the talk of
death panels and job destruction, for all the repeal attempts — this law
is now helping tens of millions of Americans.”
Mr.
Obama’s plea to stop “refighting battles that have been settled again
and again and again” met on Thursday with immediate resistance. House
Speaker John A. Boehner,
Republican of Ohio, promised to “do everything we can” to undermine the
law. Jeb Bush, a Republican candidate for president, vowed “to repeal
and replace this flawed law” if he succeeds Mr. Obama in the Oval
Office.
Mr.
Boehner said he will continue to move forward with a lawsuit against
the president that argues that Mr. Obama overstepped his legal authority
in carrying out the health care act, although the case is in its early
stages at the district court level and could take years to come before
the Supreme Court. Other Republicans mused on Thursday about using
parliamentary maneuvers to chip away at the law.
But
for Mr. Obama, the ruling was a personal affirmation of the wisdom of
engaging in a costly political fight that began almost as soon as he
took office. The court’s ruling, Mr. Obama said Thursday, cements the
Affordable Care Act in American history as the logical extension of Social Security and Medicare.
“This
generation of Americans chose to finish the job,” Mr. Obama said,
reading from one of two sets of remarks — one written as if the Supreme
Court upheld the subsidies and another as if the court did not. Cody
Keenan, Mr. Obama’s chief speechwriter, had prepared both sets before
the court announced its decision.
Once
the decision was announced, and just before walking into the Rose
Garden, Mr. Obama signed the set of remarks for Mr. Keenan that were
written as if the court had ruled against the administration. “Didn’t
need this one, brother!” Mr. Obama scrawled across the bottom.
Full Remarks: Obama on Health Care Ruling
President Obama spoke on Thursday about
the Supreme Court’s decision allowing nationwide tax subsidies to help
poor and middle-class people buy health insurance.
By Associated Press on Publish Date June 25, 2015.
Photo by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times.
The
White House soon released photographs of Mr. Obama and Denis Mc Donough,
the president’s chief of staff, performing celebratory fist pumps
outside the Oval Office.
The
court ruling came as Mr. Obama is heading toward another major
legislative accomplishment, the passage of powerful new authority that
will allow him to finish negotiations on a historic trade agreement with
Pacific Rim nations. That bill, which he pushed over the objections of
many in his party, will be on his desk for his signature this week.
But
the Supreme Court decision is the bigger victory at home for Mr. Obama,
whose domestic policy legacy has always depended on the Affordable Care
Act’s becoming a permanent part of the American health care system by
the time he leaves office in 2017.
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