On Tuesday night, President Obama will address the nation on his plan for Afghanistan in a speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point. The speech is scheduled to begin at 8:00 P.M. Eastern, and will be covered live on all of the major television news networks.
From Nicole Derse, the OFA National Training Director:
I wanted to invite you to a special OFA National Training we’re holding for some of our top volunteers in early December.
The training is a great chance to learn how to make the biggest impact in your community, ask questions, and learn specific skills such as how to talk with your neighbors about health reform and use OFA’s technology to organize most effectively.
RSVP now to reserve your spot in an OFA National Training event near you:
During the election last year, we learned that when we build a dedicated community of volunteer leaders, we can bring about powerful change.
This training is part of building our momentum on the ground — strengthening our community in every part of the country by bringing volunteers together, learning and sharing best practices, and refining our plan to move forward with our vision for the future.
I hope you can make it,
Nicole
Nicole Derse
National Training Director
Organizing for America
In case you missed it, here’s the full video of President Obama granting the traditional Thanksgiving pardon to the Official White House Turkey, in a ceremony that took place Wednesday:
Given the holiday, the White House released the President’s Weekly Address early this week, and President Obama took the opportunity to call to our attention the men and women in uniform who are away from home, sacrificing time with family to protect our safety and freedom. He also talks about the progress of health care reform, the Recovery Act, and job creation, as we work to ensure that next Thanksgiving will be a brighter day:
Earlier this afternoon, President Obama sent supporters a special Thanksgiving message of thanks and gratitude:
Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, Americans across the country will sit down together, count our blessings, and give thanks for our families and our loved ones.
American families reflect the diversity of this great nation. No two are exactly alike, but there is a common thread they each share.
Our families are bound together through times of joy and times of grief. They shape us, support us, instill the values that guide us as individuals, and make possible all that we achieve.
So tomorrow, I’ll be giving thanks for my family — for all the wisdom, support, and love they have brought into my life.
But tomorrow is also a day to remember those who cannot sit down to break bread with those they love.
The soldier overseas holding down a lonely post and missing his kids. The sailor who left her home to serve a higher calling. The folks who must spend tomorrow apart from their families to work a second job, so they can keep food on the table or send a child to school.
We are grateful beyond words for the service and hard work of so many Americans who make our country great through their sacrifice. And this year, we know that far too many face a daily struggle that puts the comfort and security we all deserve painfully out of reach.
So when we gather tomorrow, let us also use the occasion to renew our commitment to building a more peaceful and prosperous future that every American family can enjoy.
It seems like a lifetime ago that a crowd met on a frigid February morning in Springfield, Illinois to set out on an improbable course to change our nation.
In the years since, Michelle and I have been blessed with the support and friendship of the millions of Americans who have come together to form this ongoing movement for change.
You have been there through victories and setbacks. You have given of yourselves beyond measure. You have enabled all that we have accomplished — and you have had the courage to dream yet bigger dreams for what we can still achieve.
So in this season of thanks giving, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to you, and my anticipation of the brighter future we are creating together.
With warmest wishes for a happy holiday season from my family to yours,
President Barack Obama
The White House announced today that President Obama will travel to Copenhagen on Dec. 9 to participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference, in order to work with the international community to drive progress toward a comprehensive and operational Copenhagen accord. The White House also announced that President Obama is prepared to put on the table a U.S. emissions reduction target in the range of 17% below 2005 levels by 2020.
The Washington Post reported that the announcement provides "new momentum" for the talks, saying:
Obama’s decision to attend — and commit to an emission reduction target — prompted an outpouring of support from the environmental community and its Democratic allies …
Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry (D-Mass.), who is working to fashion a bipartisan compromise climate bill along with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), said the administration’s decision to put specific climate goals on the table at the United Nations-sponsored talks amounts to "a global game changer with big reverberations here at home."
"The Obama administration is now undeniably mustering bonafide leadership on climate change, not merely departing from Bush administration intransigence and ideology," Kerry said. "By announcing a provisional target, contingent on the support of Congress, the president has defined a path to an international agreement that challenges the developed and developing nations of the to fulfill their obligations.
Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, said it marked the first time Obama has "signaled that he’s ready to roll up his sleeves to make a climate change deal happen."
Underscoring President Obama’s commitment to American leadership on clean energy and combating climate change, the White House also announced today that a host of Cabinet secretaries and other top officials from across the Administration will travel to Copenhagen for the conference. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson are all scheduled to attend, along with Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley, and Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner.
Last weekend, Ron Brownstein – a reporter for The Atlantic – wrote that the Senate’s health insurance reform legislation marks a “milestone in the health care journey.”
Brownstein spoke to several leading economists, including MIT health care economist Jonathan Gruber, who agreed that the Senate’s legislation is a major step toward ending the unsustainable growth of costs in our health care system.
Gruber, a self-proclaimed “skeptic on this stuff,” said: “Everything is in here….I can’t think of anything I’d do that they are not doing in the bill.” Len Nichols of the non-partisan New America Foundation and Mark McClellan, the director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services under George W. Bush, were also positive in their analysis of the bill.
Brownstein digs deep into Majority Leader Reid’s efforts to blend the Senate Finance Committee’s bill with the HELP Committee’s legislation and “bend the curve” by “shifting the medical payment system away from today’s fee-for-service model toward an approach that more closely links compensation for providers to results for patients.” The piece also highlights how Reid incorporated four measures identified in a letter from 20 leading economists to President Obama, that are essential to fiscally responsible health insurance reform.
We excerpted the article in the Morning News clips on Monday, but here’s a highlight in case you missed it. It’s worth the read:
When I reached Jonathan Gruber on Thursday, he was working his way, page by laborious page, through the mammoth health care bill Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had unveiled just a few hours earlier. Gruber is a leading health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is consulted by politicians in both parties. He was one of almost two dozen top economists who sent President Obama a letter earlier this month insisting that reform won’t succeed unless it "bends the curve" in the long-term growth of health care costs. And, on that front, Gruber likes what he sees in the Reid proposal. Actually he likes it a lot.
"I’m sort of a known skeptic on this stuff," Gruber told me. "My summary is it’s really hard to figure out how to bend the cost curve, but I can’t think of a thing to try that they didn’t try. They really make the best effort anyone has ever made. Everything is in here….I can’t think of anything I’d do that they are not doing in the bill. You couldn’t have done better than they are doing…"
The attempt in all these ideas to nudge the medical system away from fee-for-service medicine toward an approach that ties compensation more closely to results captures how much the health care debate has shifted toward cost-control. So far, the rise in health care spending has proven almost invulnerable to every previous attempt to tame it, like the managed care revolution in the 1990s. Even if Obama signs into law a final bill embodying all these reform proposals, many skeptics wonder if they can bend, much less break, the seemingly inexorable increase in health care spending. Reischauer understands that skepticism, but isn’t able to entirely suppress a kernel of optimism that this latest reform agenda may prove more effective than its predecessors. "One never knows whether we’re turning the corner or if this is just playing the same old game for another inning," he says. "But I sense there’s something different out there. I think the medical profession and its leaders have read the handwriting on the wall and are trying to evolve." If so, the ideas the Senate will begin voting on tonight could mark a milestone in that journey.
Just a few moments ago, the Senate voted 60-39 to move forward with debate on health reform legislation. OFA Director Mitch Stewart explained:
For the first time ever, the Senate just voted to begin debate on a comprehensive health insurance reform bill. This was the first big hurdle we had to overcome to pass reform through the full Senate.
The decision was close — and insurance company lobbyists were working overtime to defeat us — but your calls this week made a huge difference.
There are more fights ahead, but this is a big victory and I wanted to take a minute to thank you for making it possible.
The Senate is expected to begin debate following the Thanksgiving break.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid introduced the Senate version of the health reform bill on Wednesday, and tonight the full Senate is expected to vote on the "motion to proceed," which would clear the way for the Senate to begin debate on the bill. Sixty votes are needed to pass cloture on the motion, after which the bill would move to the floor for discussion.
CNN reports:
Proceedings got under way shortly before 10 a.m. Saturday and will last through the early evening.
Around 8 p.m., the Senate will hold a roll call vote on the motion to invoke cloture.
Reid needs 60 votes to overcome a certain GOP filibuster attempt and open the chamber’s debate on the bill. It also would take 60 votes to close debate that could last for weeks, while final approval of the bill would require only a simple majority.
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