Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Obama signs health care reform bill.
Washington (CNN) -- President Obama on Tuesday signed into law a sweeping health care reform bill, the nation's most substantial social legislation in four decades, achieving a top priority of his administration.
The jubilant signing ceremony capped a political victory for Obama that supporters hope could guarantee his place in history with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson as one of the most successful social reforming presidents.
While Republicans and social conservatives vow to try to undermine or even repeal the bill, Obama and Democratic leaders celebrated Tuesday's signing as historic progress for the nation.
"It's been easy at times to doubt our ability to do such a big thing, such a complicated thing, to wonder if there are limits to what we as a people can still achieve," Obama said.
"We are not a nation that scales back its aspirations," he continued. "We are not a nation that falls prey to doubt or mistrust. We don't fall prey to fear."
Rather, "we are a nation that does what is hard, what is necessary, what is right," Obama said.
In the end, he said, the bill shows that America believes in the "core principle" that "everybody should have some basic security when it comes to health care."
Was it all worth it for Obama?
The crowd stood to cheer when Obama and Vice President Joe Biden entered the packed East Room of the White House, then chanted Obama's campaign slogan of "Fired up! Ready to go!" as Obama and Biden applauded and smiled.
Among those on hand for the signing ceremony was Vicki Kennedy, the widow of Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, who championed health care reform for decades before his death last year.
Also present were several people who wrote Obama in the past year about their personal woes over losing or being unable to get health insurance. Obama had told their stories when campaigning for the health care bill in recent months.
He also noted some private citizens attending Tuesday's ceremony, including 11-year-old Marcelas Owens of Washington state and Ryan Smith, a small-business owner from California, who supported the bill.
And he said, "I'm signing this reform bill into law on behalf of my mother, who argued with insurance companies even as she battled cancer in her final days."
iReport: What will health care reform mean to you?
Democratic senators and representatives filled the crowd, and all stood to cheer and applaud after Obama used 20 pens to sign the bill.
The new law narrowly passed the House of Representatives late Sunday night. It was approved by the Senate in December. In both votes, no Republicans supported the measure.
A separate compromise package of changes also was passed by the House on Sunday and still needs to be approved by the Senate. If the compromise measure also becomes law, it would raise the total cost of the health care bill to $940 billion.
The measure is projected to extend insurance coverage to roughly 32 million additional Americans, in part by expanding Medicaid assistance for the poor while creating an insurance exchange to increase competition. It also will require most Americans to have health insurance or pay a fine.
"You have turned the right of every American to have access to decent health care into reality for the first time in American history," Biden said in introducing Obama.
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THIS MOMENTOUS DAY!
ReplyDeleteNot one day in anyone's life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down's syndrome child.
Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example.
Each smallest act of kindness - even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile - reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it's passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away.
Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will.
All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined - those dead, those living, those generations yet to come - that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands.
Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength - the very survival - of the human tapestry.
Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days for which we, in our dissatisfaction, so often yearn are already with us; all great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in THIS MOMENTOUS DAY!
Excerpt from Dean Koontz's book, "From the Corner of His Eye".
It embodies the idea of how the smallest of acts can have such a profound effect on each of our lives.