Obama channels FDR in defending public option on healthcare (text here)

Since a flurry of television interviews several days ago, President Obama has been relatively quiet about the healthcare debate. Even as a key Senate committee shot down the public option, sending a message that Democrats did not have the 60 votes needed in that chamber, the president said little publicly.

But today, during a speech in which he announced $5 billion for the National Institutes for Health for cancer research, part of the economic-recovery legislation's stimulus to spur both jobs and discoveries, Obama took a moment to reenter the fray over healthcare.

"There are some who have opposed the reforms we’re suggesting, saying it would lead to a takeover by the government of the healthcare sector," he said. "But this concern about the involvement of government, I should point out, has been present whenever we have sought to improve our healthcare system."
 
Obama noted that nearly 70 years ago President Franklin Roosevelt came to the same place -- for the dedication of the NIH -- to defend his own attempts at giving Americans affordable healthcare. He quoted FDR as saying, "Neither the American people, nor their government, intends to socialize medical practice any more than they plan to socialize industry."

Imagine, said Obama, "FDR was being accused of a government takeover of healthcare. "

The president added that the progress made in medical science over the decades largely as a result of government investment is "a reminder that while we’ve made great advances in medicine, our debates haven’t always kept pace." FDR's words, he said, "remind us that there have always been those who argued against progress, but that at our best, we’ve never allowed our fears to overwhelm our hopes for a brighter future."

You can read the full transcript below, as provided by the White House.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: President Franklin Roosevelt preparing to give his first "fireside chat" on March 12, 1933. Credit: Associated Press

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Nancy Reagan returns to a royal Washington welcome

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan got the royal treatment today in Washington. Though her husband was a Republican who often tussled with Democrats on Capitol Hill, and though she was often reviled for her expensive clothes and socialite friends, today there was no sign of partisanship or any long knives.

At the Capitol Rotunda, leaders of Congress honored President Ronald Wilson Reagan with a statue celebrating what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called "that storied life." Calling Reagan "one of the giants of the 20th century," McConnell said that the former Hollywood actor and governor of California "stood taller than any statue." The source of his height, said McConnell, "is here with us." Praising Mrs. Reagan for helping to lift the nation "when we needed it most," he added, "America is still grateful."

(As each state gets two statues in the Capitol, the state Legislature earlier cleared the way by knocking from his pedestal Thomas Starr King, a 19th century San Francisco Unitarian Universalist preacher whose image has graced the Capitol for 78 years.)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the Reagan marriage "one of great love stories of all time" and said that the American people benefited from the first family's partnership.

Thanking Mrs. Reagan for her activism, Pelosi said, "Your support for stem-cell research made a significant difference in lives of many Americans." Noting Reagan's fierce belief in....

What Obama actually said to graduates at Notre Dame

Yesterday, as we reported here at The Ticket, it was the Mrs offering rhetorical advice to happy about-to-be-college graduates at UC-Merced's first senior class graduation.

Today, the Great Change Agent himself went out to Indiana of all places to give his second commencement address as GCA. The first one, early last week at Arizona State University, netted him a longlasting scholarship for students yet to come.

All he got from today's at Notre Dame was an honorary degree to go in the drawer with all the other honorary pieces of paper yet to come. Plus, he got a reignited national controversy beyond the usual crowd of puffed-up Domers, over abortion and stemcell research, with cardinals carping and bishops boycotting and the gruesome, head-turning-the-other-way photos of aborted fetuses.

Predictably, the president of the United State (as opposed to the president of the UND) handled today's affair with the usual, chin-high Obama aplomb and requisite self-deprecatory jokes, despite the eruption of a shouting protester. He noted, for instance, that he's only batting one-for-two in the honorary college degree department.

(FYI, his political partner Joe Biden, who had the entire weekend off up in Wilmington of all places, is batting 1.000 in that category. But, of course, Biden served 10 times longer in the U.S. Senate than his much younger boss and got a real degree from Syracuse before getting the pretend one last week.)

Obama also spoke of how he came to his religious faith -- which his spokesmen describe as "Christian," not Catholicism -- through his anti-poverty community organizing work on Chicago's South Side jointly with the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, still widely-revered in the Midwest. Obama called him "saintly" to audience applause.

One tradition the GCA isn't changing yet is that POTUS gives three graduation addresses each spring -- one public school, one private school and one military service academy. Obama's third college graduate sendoff....

Sunday Shows: Kaine, Steele, Kyl, Webb, Orszag

ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos: Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Jim Webb (D-Va.) and a roundtable with James Carville, Liz Cheney, Steve Schmidt, The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel and ABC's George Will.

Bloomberg's Political Capital with Al Hunt: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chairman Sheila Bair, Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass, Bloomberg's Hans Nichols and Kate O'Beirne.

CBS' Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), ACLU Director Anthony Romero, Slate/CBS' John Dickerson and USA Today's Joan Biskupic.

CNN's GPS with Fareed Zakaria: Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

CNN's State of the Union with John King: White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.).

Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace: Notre Dame professor Rev. Richard McBrien; National Director of Priests for Life Rev. Frank Pavone; Sen. Mitch McConnell; a round table with Fox's Brit Hume, Fortune's Nina Easton, Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol and Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press; and "Power Player" Smithsonian Board of Regents chair Patty Stonesifer.

NBC's Meet the Press with David Gregory: Chairmen of the Democratic and Republican National Committees: Tim Kaine and Michael Steele plus a round table with Haass, Newsweek's Jon Meacham and Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photoo: Associated Press (Steele).

Obama's Notre Dame visit sparks renewed abortion culture wars

President Barack Obama's upcoming commencement speech to graduating students of the University of Notre Dame, scheduled for May 17, has become more than a fight over whether a president who favors legal abortion should be honored by a Roman Catholic university.

The occasion of the speech has morphed into one of many political sparks that we daresay are leading to a re-ignition of the semi-dormant culture wars.

Those clashes died down during the Bush administration when social conservatives were placated by having a friend in the Oval Office who could, with the stroke of a pen, keep them happy on issues such as stem cell research, the so-called global gag rule about abortion, and the "conscience rule," which George W. Bush signed before leaving office. Also, the conflagration in Iraq and an economy melting down kept attention focused elsewhere.

But now, with a pro-choice (and pro-embryonic stem cell research) president and Congress, and a push for gay marriage that is not going away, the embers of the culture wars are glowing bright.

Right now, Ground Zero is South Bend, Ind., home to Notre Dame. 

The resurgent antiabortion activist Randall Terry, who became a Catholic in....

Hollywood sees Obama stem cell move as bipartisan blockbuster

President Obama's decision to expand the federal government's role in stem cell research business may be controversial in some quarters, but don't expect anything but a standing ovation from the friendly folks in Hollywood.

“For those of us who've worked in this area, this is an extraordinarily happy day,” former Paramount head Sherry Lansing said of Obama’s decision to lift the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. “I've gotten tons of calls. This will lead to huge advances in fighting diseases like cancer and diabetes."

“Obama," Lansing added, "has done everything he said he would do. It’s thrilling.”

Hospitals and medical research are the industry's equivalent of bipartisanship, and stem cell research has become, in many ways, the cause of the hour. In part, that's because it seems to offer hope as a way to produce new treatments that touch prominent film and television families personally:

Spinal injuries (Christopher Reeve); Parkinson's (Michael J. Fox) and juvenile diabetes (Jerry and Janet Zucker and Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher).

Hollywood agents, producers and studio executives may gleefully undercut each other Monday through Friday. But on Saturday night, they'll all turn up and give generously to a program to combat disease or to a cutting-edge hospital, so to speak.

The industry's tradition of supporting medical causes dates back to the days when purely political giving was poison for stars locked into the studio system and moguls protective of their studio brands. Nobody, however, could criticize anybody for giving to relieve suffering.

The Zuckers and friends Fisher and Wick began organizing the entertainment industry five years ago, when both families discovered their children had diabetes. Since then, Hollywood’s stem cell research advocates have only become more powerful. (Just ask any federal candidate who comes to town looking for a political kind of fundraising.)

Obama promised the group he would take action, if elected, to lift the ban. In preparation for his announcement Monday, his staff invited Lansing, the Zuckers, Fisher and Wick to attend the news conference.

Jerry Zucker said he and his wife declined the invitation because of their production schedule on "Fair Game," the movie about Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. (Remember, she's the undercover CIA agent that no one could identify. So keep it just between us.)

The movie features Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, but that's not a secret; you can talk about it.

The Zuckers did watch the announcement on TV. “Government -- and, particularly, science -- needs to be conducted with reason, not ideology,” said Jerry Zucker. “This was a return to reason.”

-- Tina Daunt

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Photo: SherryLansingFoundation.org

Obama "takes handcuffs off" stem cell research -- real full text here

From his Crawford ranch in the first year of his presidency, President Bush announced a ban on federal funding for research on any stem-cell lines created after that day, Aug. 9, 2001. Ever since, the federal government only has funded research on stem-cell lines created from embryos before then.

After Bush's decision, dollars shifted away from the limited U.S. programs, flowing to other countries and even other states, such as California, which approved a $3-billion research grant to forward the effort. The reason for the search for outside funding: Many scientists believe stem-cell research holds promise for treatment of degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, heart damage and spinal-cord injury.

Today, President Obama signs an executive order to overturn Bush's edict and, as Sen. Tom Harkin  (D-Iowa) put it, "take the handcuffs off" U.S. efforts.

Obama invoked the memory of actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed in a 1995 horseriding accident and underwent grueling therapy in a nine-year regimen in a failed effort to walk again. Reeve, pictured above in a 1997 photo with wife Dana, died in 2004 at the age of 52. Dana Reeve died three years later of cancer. With patient advocates on hand for the signing ceremony, Obama thanked "all those whose names we don't know, who organized and raised awareness and kept on fighting -- even when it was too late for them or the people they love."

Obama's rare foray into the culture wars included one plank that will please critics: a vow not use cloning for scientific research.

We will never undertake this research lightly. We will support it only when it is both scientifically worthy and responsibly conducted.  We will develop strict guidelines, which we will rigorously enforce, because we cannot ever tolerate misuse or abuse.  And we will ensure that our government never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction.  It is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society, or any society.

Abortion foes argue that using embryonic stem cells destroys life. But stem-cell research has attracted bipartisan support. Obama's rival in the presidential race, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, supported lifting the ban. And actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson's disease, campaigned on the issue.

Still, don't look for the spigots to open right away. The National Institutes of Health has to draft  guidelines for researchers applying for the funds. And it's still up to Congress to tackle the political hot-potato issue of whether to overturn a separate legislative ban on federal financing.

That's why the other initiative the president signed -- a memo directing the head of the White House office of science and technology to restore "scientific integrity to government decision-making" -- could have greater effect. Campaigning against Bush policies that ignored scientific papers on global warming for what he called ideological reasons, Obama promised to take the politics out of science. Today he made good on that promise, saying:

Let’s be clear: Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources –- it is also about protecting free and open inquiry.  It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient –- especially when it’s inconvenient.  It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda –- and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.

Read the full text of Obama's remarks below.

-- Johanna Neuman

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Photo: Associated Press

Pelosi & the pope: Talk about an odd couple

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), on an official visit to Italy, is scheduled to visit with the pope Wednesday at the Vatican.

They certainly have enough to talk about.

The Vatican is said to be fuming that President Obama, in his first days in office, overturned a ban on using U.S. dollars to fund abortions overseas. The Vatican also frowns on U.S. approval for the first human trials using embryonic stem cells. And of course Pope Benedict XVI has said that abortion-rights Catholics like Pelosi should not receive Communion.

As for Pelosi, she might want to ask the pope about his recent decision to rehabilitate a bishop who denied the existence of the Holocaust, or his appointment of a bishop in Austria who had blamed the sins of New Orleans residents for the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

All of which is likely to fuel a continuing debate in Catholic circles, as the New York Times put it, about whether this pope's focus on doctrine could alienate mainstream Catholics like Pelosi.

The two have met before. In fact, when she received the pope on a visit to the U.S. last year, Pelosi gave him the respectful greeting of a hand kiss.

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-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Associated Press

With new exec orders, Obama plans U-turns on Bush policies

As soon as Barack Obama takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, he's going to begin issuing executive orders to show that the "change we need" (to quote a campaign slogan) has arrived.

So says John Podesta, head of the Obama transition team, during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday."

“There's a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action, and I think we'll see the president do that,” Podesta said. “I think that he feels like he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set.”

Among Bush administration actions likely to be quickly rescinded:

• The prohibition on federal funding for international family-planning agencies that provide abortions -- or counseling and information about abortion -- even in countries where the procedure is legal. This policy, known as the Mexico City initiative, was initially put in place by Ronald Reagan and reaffirmed by the current president's father. Bill Clinton removed it in 1993; President Bush restored it two days after taking office in 2001.
• The Environmental Protection Agency's decision last December against granting California's request to impose more stringent greenhouse-gas emission standards than federal law requires. At least 16 other states were prepared to adopt California's rules if the EPA had approved the state's request to waive federal standards in exchange for its own tougher ones. The EPA ruling was seen as a victory for the automobile industry.
• The ban on federal funding for research on new lines of embryonic stem cells. In August 2001, Bush limited government funding to the embryonic stem cell lines then in existence and prohibited any funding for development of new embryonic stem cell lines. Proponents of such research -- including many Democrats and moderate Republicans -- have pointed to the potential for cures for such devastating illnesses as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, but many social and religious conservatives liken the use of such stem cells to abortion because it requires the destruction of an embryo.

There's more detail on this (and more) from our Tribune colleague Mark Silva over at The Swamp.

-- Leslie Hoffecker

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Fresh off his Saturday Saddleback triumph, John McCain attacks on Iraq

To the surprise of many, John McCain seemed in his element Saturday at the candidate forum Rick Warren conducted at Orange County's Saddleback Church.

As Peter Hamby notes today at CNN.com, McCain's supposed reluctance to discuss his faith was not evident; indeed, he told the evangelical audience that he had been "saved and forgiven" by Christ. Adds the MSNBC political shop: "We seriously underestimated how Saturday’s religious forum was made to order for McCain, despite the perceptions that McCain rarely talks openly about his faith. On all the questions regarding hot-button social issues, the Arizona senator didn’t have to depart from GOP orthodoxy one bit, except on stem cells."

To the surprise of no one, McCain was definitely in his element this morning as he spoke to the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

He returned, with relish, to the theme he had stressed during Barack Obama's overseas trip last month: that he was right in strongly advocating last year's surge in U.S. troop deployment in Iraq, while his rival was wrong in strongly opposing it and is having a hard time admitting that.

McCain didn't quite reprise the charge he made while Obama was stopping in Iraq -- that his foe would rather win the White House than win a war. But he walked right up to that line, saying: "Behind all of these claims and positions by Sen. Obama (on Iraq) lies the ambition to be president."

Our colleague Mark Silva at the Swamp has more on McCain's speech; Michael Muskal and Maeve Reston have a story at LATtimes.com.

Obama appears before the VFW on Tuesday.

-- Don Frederick