Obama delays trip to Asia to see to health care bill

President Barack Obama

President Obama agreed Friday to postpone a high-profile trip to Asia, signaling his commitment to swift action on his signature health care bill as Democrats in Congress prepared for action next week and expanded the bill’s scope to include a popular student aid initiative.

The president’s change of travel plans, which will move his departure overseas from March 18 to March 21, will enable him to remain active in pushing uneasy Democrats toward final approval of his signature domestic policy initiative.

“We stand ready to stay as long as it takes to pass a bill,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco.

In a move that doubles the stakes for Obama, Democrats are now expecting to simultaneously advance another major White House priority – Obama’s drive to overhaul the federal college student-loan program and to increase spending for grants to low-income college students.

Democratic leaders have tentatively decided to add the student aid overhaul to the health care package because it generates additional budget savings and circumvents a possible obstacle in the Senate as they deploy an expedited legislative procedure known as “budget reconciliation.”

The Congressional Budget Office has been working to complete its analysis of the health care bill, which Democrats intend to keep to a cost of less than $1 trillion over 10 years. The CBO’s authoritative report on projected costs and impact is considered crucial to a small group of conservative Democrats who remain uncommitted to supporting the bill.

The move to link the health and education bills is a big boost to prospects for passing the student loan bill, which is vehemently opposed by the banking lobby.

Achieving victory on two top domestic priorities could help Democrats respond to critics on both the left and the right that they have done too little to deliver on Obama’s ambitious agenda.

The risk of linking the issues, some Democrats warn, is that it will distract from their singular focus on getting health care legislation into law and open them to criticism from Republicans that they are larding the bill with unrelated matters that have not been well considered by the Senate.

Obama’s proposed overhaul of federal student aid – which now provides loans both directly from the government and through private lenders who receive federal guarantees and interest subsidies – calls for eliminating bank subsidies and instead having all loans be made through the government.

Advocates of that approach say it would be more efficient and less expensive. The CBO estimates that the Obama plan would produce a net deficit reduction of about $29 billion over five years.

Source: sfgate.com

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