there is precedence. we're saying no, not even to our dear friend the 44th, no, we're laying down guidelines, and he yes, when we have honest disagreements, we want to talk about them. .

he said keep me advised and i think that's what we have to do. so, in the spirit of keeping him advised, and not just congratulating him on all the things that i overwhelmingly like, i'm just going to take a moment and describe to you the

circumstances that i think he we fine ourselves in on this 24 the day of july in terms of healthcare and the political system itself. where are we? well, first of the healthcare bill is, unfortunately, in trouble, and i heard the president driving this morning out to -- being quoted on n.p.r. from chicago saying "first of all, we got to do it right and then we got to get it done." well, yes, but i don't think it's being done right.

not that it's not single payer, although the president may have -- well, he couldn't have been a single payer before me, but he was a single payer and a good one. he made some great speeches about it. now he's got evaluation that if we were starting all over again, we would start with single payer, but we're not starting all over again. please, as they say, give me a break. of course we're not starting out all over, but we should be. we ought to scrap this system and somewhere along the line people in congress, inside the beltway, are going to do what most people already want. they want a system where it doesn't turn on which of 1,200

policies you've got, not that anybody has ever read the fine print on them, and then number two, did you understand it after you read it? i love these members that get up and say read the bill. what good is reading the bill if it's 1,000 pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill? but what i'm saying is that too much is the same we're not making enough changes. we're not covering everybody. it's not really universal. creating two classes, buying insurance for the poor, that failed in massachusetts. ask barney frank when he comes on monday here.

we need a real serious bill. by the way, the fundamental question, is healthcare a constitutional right? i mean, do you have a right to healthcare in the american system of government or not? well, we believe that people do, and he we are introducing a constitutional amendment just to make it real clear so that you don't have to infer or assume that that's a given and all that. so what we think he we have is something, and then -- how many minutes have i got left? >> you got about 9. >> good. now, look at the other body. well, don't look at the other

body. geez. how can you have -- you know, i keep thinking that if this business that i'm in wasn't so serious, it's really would make a good comedy if you took out the names not to embarrass the people that speak, but i mean, here he we are. we just got around to agreeing that climate change is something we cause and that it ought to be -- i mean, we finally admitted that. science is a mile long on this subject and we're finally agreeing to it. we're saying -- and this is a phrase that either draws tears or a smile to mys face. we want to provide everybody in america with affordable

insurance. what an oxymoron. how can a bloke who can't pay his rent and lost his job in bankruptcy, how can he get affordable insurance? well, we'll buy it for him, chairman. you will, huh? well, that will be the most second-class insurance policy anybody ever saw, and then, of course, to make it really difficult, we've got the question of a public option, and i'm so proud, first of all, of dennis kucinich, who in one committee introduced the amendment that would allow any state that wanted to try universal single payer

healthcare, they would be able to do it, and he got that through. we're thr trying to keep it in. do not hold your breath on how long this can stay in. but at least he got it in and we're now going to find out who doesn't want it in and stow forth, so at least give us a public option that's worth uttering the term, and already we've had a number of senators that have already said public option is out. we're not giving the american people a choice between private insurance and a public plan, which wouldn't have to advertise the costs. profit taking would be down 3 or 4% for overhead for medicare, 15% and up for private

insurances, depending on which one. they said take it out. we don't even want it. we don't even want a weak one. we don't want any at all. so we have got a problem, and the president -- oh, god, what a guy. what presence. what intellectual force. what courage. what ability. mr. nice guy. there are so many people even in my group that say, look, let's stop being so nice. these guys are no on everything. we got the votes. let's take them out. but he doesn't do that. he keeps saying, please, come to

the table, have a drink with me on friday evenings in the white house. let's talk, negotiate. hence -- but that's smart because once he starts swinging back, the media like you guys will be saying, oh, there they go again, the d's and the r's are fighting and fighting and it's all the same, and he obama is all about making it not all the same, and that's why he is doing that. that's why i take exception to some of my friends who want him to sock, punch back and all that sort of thing. now, i close with my observations about the political situation we fine ourselves in.

here is an old american respected political party self-destructing right in front of our eyes. in every way. every day, they call 18, 2 dozen votes, roll call votes on everything they can think of, motions to adjourn all over the place. the minority leader had had a fund-raiser, so he made them read the whole bill, 55 pages for two or three hours -- thats was yesterday -- until he got back. what will they do today that will make you either laugh or

cry? it goes on and on, and as a supporter of sarah palin for taking over the republican party, i'm one of her grade advocates. i mean, what an attractive, young neoconservative reactionary. wow. there has never been one like her. she attracts crowds. she's going to write a book. she's so busy she doesn't have enough time to govern anymore. alaska, hey. let's get ready for the big one when we go back in to take on obama. i want to encourage her on. then there is my former colleague, speaker of the house newt gingrich.

newt has remade himself at least three times. there is three additions of gingrich and he always gets particularly vocal just like the vice president, who has got a book coming out. got a book coming out, put me on everything, and of course with the vice president we -- those those -- there are groups in the democratic party who have been accused of helping him get time to get on, because as a guy who couldn't get above about 15% popularity when he wasn't hiding somewhere and claiming he's not in the administration, this is our kind of guy and, oh, don't forget steele, the chairman of the republican party, who has not gotten off one consistent

speech ever since he became the chairman. i mean, the whole thing -- i don't know who is left around there. with an organization going down the drain and with these kind of leaders coming forward to regain control, we got a couple of family values men that got caught, whose, i won't mention their names or what they did, because you know already, but they were going to become presidential candidates, and now they want them to take a hike out of the senate, so we live in exciting important times. what you do in the media is so important, and it's not always

easy but many of you do it. now, are you giving me the out? many of us are investigating and this needs to happen. i commend you for it. i thank you for my patient attention to my remarks this afternoon. [applause] >> not that he we don't like hearing all this nice stuff about the media but can you explain to us more about the politics of the healthcare bill? what are the democrats disagreeing about, what will it take to bring democrats together and what will it take to get republican buy-in? >> if i really knew the answer

to that, i would go leave this luncheon and go straight to the speaker's office and make her the beneficiary of this wisdom that i do not possess. here are some of the problems, and we can expound on them, but one is that there are a lot of -- we've got majorities, but in some sense, they're paper majorities. you've got 60 in the senate. i wouldn't want to bet your house on that. we got 50-something blue dogs in the house, half of whom vote republican most of the time or half the time. then we have a number of men and women who are freshmen from

districts that are normally republican, and they don't want any tough votes at all, any strong breeze they think will blow them away, sos these are the problems that you are confronted with. we want a strong public option in the house. the senate, some do, and some don't, and when you have a senator like max baucus that is making the decisions on he reform in the healthcare bill, you're in trouble, and if you don't know it, you're going to find out over the next few weeks, so it's not an easy lift at all. the president says now is the time and called us in to a summit in the white house, the

first healthcare summit and said everybody get busy, and now he knows he has got to start. he can't wait. if he is waiting for us to serve him up with a healthcare reform bill, he knows now he has got to get into it. he has got to expend some capital and he is doing that, so those are some of the problems. the overarching problem is how are you going to pay for it? and will this put us into more debt? of course the answer is with universal single payer, you end up with less staff he so we don't have universal single payer, so as long as the insurance companies are there, as long as pre-existing illnesses as a way to disqualify anybody that's got something that's going to cost them money, after all, this is a business,

conyers, the way you make profit in a healthcare business is don't insure the people that are likely to be sick and the ones that are, get rid of them if you can by any means necessary. that's how you make profit. ask the insurance people. they'll tell you. >> why do you want to scrap the healthcare system when it is reported that 70% of americans are generally satisfied with their healthcare plan? >> because it's not an accurate statement, that's why. the majority of americans want single payer, and i got two polls to back he me up. they want a universal -- and they're willing, many of them, to pay more for it, and now the medical community has come around. when i first started out, i mean, i was invited to an a.m.a.

conference once, and now, more doctors support our plan than any other man, and of course, you know the nurses are all over this plan. they support it. the people support it. the unions support it. community groups support it, so telling me that -- look, 50 million people don't even have a plan to prefer. they don't have any insurance at all. >> how influential are the big pharma and big insurance lobbyists and should your congressional colleagues sens back their campaign contributions from those groups? >> oh, how could anybody have gotten the notion that pharma and the health insurance company were giving campaign

contributions to influence the independent-minded members of the house and the senate? oh, where did anyone ever get that notion? well, if you were in a group that the chief exec was making millions a year and wasn't even a doctor, and you have the question of the bottom line, how much money did you make? how is the stock doing? of course they're the ones blocking this. why would they want a single payer when they got 1,200 other ip insurance companies to fool around with right now and come pete with each other? i go down my street in my town and what do i see? billboard, "come to this hospital. we're the best in the country on

baby care." come to this hospital, another billboard, five blocks away, come to this, we're heart specialists. come to -- another one -- something else, something else, something else. they're competing, aps until we take that incredible cost of administration, overhead that's driving some doctors out of the business, because they can't afford all the administrative help they need to fill out this growing number of insurance policies. >> will you oppose a health plan without a public option? >> nada. no. i should say heck no. i could say something else. of course not. it's all i can do to support a

health plan without universal single payer healthcare. i mean, that's what i've been working on. by the way, that movement will hopefully help a hot of people people -- help a lot of people in the legislature that there is a real public option. the real men and women on k street can white public options that aren't worth the napkin they're written on. i'm talking about a real public option, not something a guy dreams up between martinis an sends it down for us to enact. >> you want single payer. president obama does not. why do you want it and why doesn't obama? >> well, i want it because it's

the best plan and i can are remember when obama agreed with me. i'm just guessing now, because we haven't talked about it, but he wants it because of the rahm emanuel factor. i'm glad you asked me. the rahm emanuel factor, to quote him, is that, look, we want success and we're willing to make a deal about anything. does that make you feel pretty comfortable about healthcare? that's the whole idea is that he wants a bill. he wants to win in the off-year elections. he wants our president reelected

the next time he comes up, and so do i, but i don't want anything to stamp reform and let it go at that. this will not hold down costs. it will not cover everybody. it will not take away the misery of hundreds of thousands of people who have been caught. we have so many horror stories about people having to go in bankrupcy or we're having a hearing on it next week in judiciary about the major cause of personal bankruptcies is healthcare bills, hospital bills, doctor bills, and the tragedy of people not being able to eat or pay rent or even get their pharmaceutical prescriptions.

>> votes on the floor. can you hold on a couple of minutes? >> 12 minutes left on the first vote. 4 more votes to follow. many apologies for congressman conyers. thank you very much. >> can we just take a couple more questions? >> no. >> really, really? >> no. really. [applause] >> so what? i got to go. cheer clear. >> narchg you all very much. forgive me for doing. this maybe i'll come on again

and have more time. [applause] . >> my apologies. we are rending early. i will make a few announcements about our future speakers on july 27, which is monday, congressman barney frank, a democrat from massachusetts an chairman of the house financial services committee will join us^ . on july 29, senator john kerry of massachusetts, an chairman of the senate committee on foreign relations will join us, and coming up in the fall on september 29, ken burns, the documentary filmmaker will be here to talk about his newest documentary. also on september 12, the national press club will host the 12th annual 5k run and auction benefitting the national press club scholarship fund for diversity in journalism. for more information, go to our website at www.press.org.

now would be the time to sign up for that. also, i'd like to thank you all for coming today. i would like to thank the national press club staff members, melinda cook, pat nelson and how ard rothman for organizing today's lunch. also thanks to the national press club's library for their research. the video club is provided by the national broadcast operations center. our events are available for download on i-tunes as well as on our website. non-members may purchase transcripts, audio and videotapes by calling 202-662-7598 or archives at press.org. for more information about the national press club, go to our website at www.press.org. thank you very much. we are adjourned. a little early. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

>> more on the healthcare bill from chris dodd of connecticut. this is 20 minutes. colleagues are aware of this, i have been put in the position of being the active chairman of the senate health, education, labor and pension committee which is chaired by our dear colleague,

senator kennedy, wrestling with his own health care crisis at this hour and has been unable to be with us as we have begun the process of making up, that is, considering the legislation dealing with health care. as the person sitting next to him i was asked to consider the responsibility of chairing the committee as we considered the health care legislation. we have finished our work, finished it a week ago on wednesday, after numerous hours, i point this out to our colleagues. many of them may be aware of this already, mr. president. we spent, on the "help" committee consideration of our bill, close to 60 hours. i am told that is the longest time in memory of memorial my of many that we have spent on any single bill with 23 sessions over 13 days with 800 amendments

before the committee and we considered just shy of 300 and we accepted 161 amendments from our republican friends on the committee. many ofhese amendments were technical amendments, they were not all substantive but worthwhile and positive but a number of very important amendments offered by our republican colleagues that i think strengthened and made the bill better bill, making it a bipartisan bill, substantively bipartisan. at the end of the day after all of the hours and work, we didn't have the votes of our republica friends on the committee but their contribution to the product was significant. as i mentioned, senator gregg and a number of our republican colleagues on the committee were concerned of the long-term fiscal impact on the insurance program for long-term care and we agreed with that amendment. and senator isakson of georgia raised the issue of end-of-life care drawing on his own family experiences and we accommodated

his ideas in that area. and senators enzi, gregg and alexander sought workplace wellness programs with incentives for employees, a very sound proposal that was recommended to us by others. it was added to the bill. and senator harkin did a very good job in reaching that accommodation. and senator hatch's amendment dealing with follow on biologics, the full hatch proposal was adopted by the committee. our friend, tom coburn, of oklahoma proposed an amendment to. pour individuals to make healthy decisions by having the c.d.c. establish a web-based prevention tool for personalized prevention plans for individuals which was accepted, as well. we accepted senator hatch's proposal to establish a coordinated environment health tracking net at the centers for disease control. and senator murkowski offered an

amendment allowing insurers to rate base on tobacco use specifically, allowing insurers to vary premiums by one to five for use of tobacco. several amendments offered by senator burr and accepted by unanimous consent to ensure the community health insurance option operates on a level playing field with all the insurers and provided a clarification that federal and state laws relating to rating preexisting conditions and fraud and abuse and quality improvement and other provisions providing to these openings, as well. several hatch and senator coburn offered amendments allowing independent insurance agents and brokers be eligible to enough gate within the american health benefit gateways. my point, mr. president, is that in addition to these technical amendments there were many substantive amendments that were adopted at part of the committee effort and i invite our colleagues' attention. we have offered to brief any

single member or others interested in this. this bill has now been on the web site where the public can read it, make comments and get ideas and respond to questions regarding provisions of the bill. while we are waiting, obviously, to see the outcome in the finance committee, the second half of the equation, it is worthwhile to note in the united states senate of the two committees with jurisdiction over health care the health, education, labor and pensions committee has completed its committee work and we invite our colleagues' attention, ideas and thoughts on how we might improve or add to provisions dealing with quality, prevention, dealing with workforce issues and with the fraud and abuse issues critically important as well as coverage questions which are essential, as well. so, mr. president, obviously i hoped we might stay here in august to deal with this issue and we will continue the process but the decision has been made to delay consideration of the health care issues until the fall and i understand how this

works and things haven't moved as quickly as we would like and some say we would need to slow down a little bit and we're going too fast on this issue. i remind my colleagues it has been seven decades and as many administrations that is served our country in that time as well as the numbers of congresses that have convened have grandparendealtwith this issue. every single congress, every single administration has failed in reaching the kind of concepts us necessarconsensus necessary t national measures. we have been challenged by the american people to defy the odds, to do what no other congress and no other administration has ever been able to achieve. i understand that we're going a little too fast for some but those out there beyond the halls of congress, an issue of how fast we're going may seem rather

perplexing. i'm stating the obvious here and i know my colleagues know this, and i presume many citizens do: every one of us who serve in this chamber, every congressman who serves down the 458, every employee you see here have a very good comprehensive health care program of insurance coverage. we are blessed as part of the fell employees benefit health package. we never have to worry, lord forbid something happens to one of us tonight, tomorrow, or our children or spouses, we are well covered with insurance. so taking a break-in august and rolling along poses no real threat to any of us or the fell employees who have this health care program. but for millions of other americans who do not have the privilege of the coverage we do, had is unsettling time, very unsettling time, mr. president. this country of ours, millions of our fellow citizens don't get to sleep with that sense of security and assurance that lord

forbid something happens to their family and they will wake up with the inability to take care of the health care problem or, maybe at the same time, go through the physical crisi the s that destroys their future. of all the bankruptcies that occur in the united states, 62% of them occur because of a health care cruise in that -- he crisis in that family and of the 62%, 75% of those people have a health insurance program. they are not the uninsured. these are people with health insurance. so if you are out there today saying you have health insurance and you could not end up in financial ruin, the fact of the matter is the overwhelming majority of people who is gone into bankruptcy because of health care crisis have been covered with insurance. 50% of all foreclosures are occurring as a result of health care crisis in that family. today, mr. president, before the

sunsets, in the united states of america, 14,000 of our fellow citizens will lose their health care coverage; 14,000 people today and every single day in america that many people lose their health care coverage. so while we sit here and say, we're just going too fast, slow down, slow down, that's easy for us to say because none of us have to ever worry about what most americans have to worry about. and that is, god forbid, they have a health care crisis and end up being destroyed economically or sitting there with the anger and frustration that i can't provide for my child, i can't provide for my spouse, and they need the kind of medical care they deserve. this is the united states of america and we rank 37th in the world in medical outcomes and we spend more money than any other nation, way beyond any other country in the world on health care. we pay the most and we rank like a third world country for

outcomes. i don't think most americans like to think of our country as being incapable of taking care of our nation in such a way. so it occurred to me that some people in this town seem to think that this process of health care is about them. did i get appropriately consulted or invited to enough meetings? did i get a headlines? what do the consultants think i should say? what are the right wores to uset words to use or hear. let me ask my colleagues, is anyone here worried they will lose their health care insurance over the august break? is anyone here unable to afford the care they thing they may need for them or their families? is any member of this body or the other body that is staying up latet night recently with a sick child for whom they cannot afford treatment? has anyone i served here

spending three hours bouncing from voice mail to voice mail to voice mail finding out why the insurance company refuses to pay for your spouse's cancer treatment? does any member of congress as they get through the august break in their states and districts, are they stuck in a job that pays too little because they have a preexisting condition and cannot get coverage anywhere else? has anyone here lost a home as 10,000 will today when they get a notice on foreclosure because of a medical bill the insurance company would not cover? does anyone in this chamber or anyone in the other chamber, a small business owner, had to choose between cutting coverage or putting your employees you car about who have been loyal to you and helped you sell your products, talk about laying them off because of the health care coverage?

i suspect, no, mr. president. why are so many in washington asking about whether or not you are a blue dog or red dog or republican or conservative, moderate, a liberal, as if somehow that was the most important issue in the country, rather than the people out there who send us here to grapple with an issue they wrestle with every single hour of every day? and we're in danger of losing this once again, falling, as has every other congress and every other administration for 70 years, because this was always about us and not about the people who sent us here asking us to try and come up with some answers that would relieve them of the fear and the frustration that confronts thep an confronts a result of our unwillingness to confront national health care reform. this is not bus. it is about the 47 million people who are uninsured, the

14,000 who lose their insurance and the millions who will lose it if we don't act. about the people who pay our salaries and our great health insurance companies as well, the people who sent us here to fight on their behalf, and will we pretend that this is about us when we treat health care reform like it's some kind of a game, a political contest, who's going to face their waterloo, who's going to lose? who can defeat someone, put them into trouble, maybe they'll lose an election over this. if that becomes the game -- as it appears to be in the minds of some -- then you wonder why some people get so angry when they hear us talk about ourselves. you better believe thth if any of us had to go through some of the things that i suspect everyone of us have heard from our constituents, every one of us -- you can go to any state in

our country at any hour and you can repeat some of these stories that i'll share with you this morning, as i've heard from my own state of connecticut. there wouldn't be anybody calling if you listened to some of these people. we mentioned 47 million and it sort of glazes over the eyes in a way. it seems to be sort of, is there anybody involved in these numbers? any stories in these? this legislation would be done by now if we paid more attention to some of these individual stories. in 2005, mr. president, a young woman in connecticut canadian mari oovment was dyin diagnosedh nonhodgkin's lymphoma. the insurance company found out that maria had once gone to a doctor for what she thought was a pinched nerve o. the insurance company decided that the denied her claim.

maria died from that illness. a young man in connecticut disclosed on his insurance application that he sometimes got headaches. several months after he got his policy, he went in for a routine eye exam. his eye doctor saw something he didn't like, sent frank to a neurologist who told him that he had multiple sclerosis. frank's insurance company decided that frank should have known that his occasional headaches were a sign of m.s. and they took away his coverage. frank's doctor wrote them a letter saying there was no way anyone could have suspected that an ordinary headache was related to m.s. frank was stuck with a $30,000 medical bill he couldn't afford. frank's condition got worse, he left his job and went on public assistance. people like kevin galvin -- i have held a series of town hall meetings in my state, four our

five of them over the last couple of months to invite people to come and share their stories about health care. the first one i held i held outside of hartford, connecticut, 8:30 on a monday morning. what in the world are we having a town hall meeting at 8:30 monday morning? 750 people showed up at that small community college on the banks of the connecticut river in hartford to come out and be heard and listen and talk about what was going on in their lives. kevin has shown up at a lot of kevin has shown up at a lot of kevin showed up and he met him as he talked about people's concerns. kevin owns a small business, a maintenance company in con he net kit and employs 17 people. some can't afford to buy insurance. the younger employees use their

emergency rooms and one has a child with an infection, they will spend all day in e.r. waiting to gets basic treatment, costing employees a day's work and kevin a day's work from that employer. by the way, we can't afford to have additional costs. think of this. if you have an insurance policy. on average, your family is paying $1,100 a year on your policy to cover people like kevin's employees, the uninsured. that is how much the average cost is per family. that is the cost on every policy to pick up the cost on kevin's employee who shows up in the emergency room. you don't get free care. they're charging for it. the costs go up for everyone else, on average, $1,100 per family in the united states. kevin had thee employ heees in their 20's and 30's who never

had a dental cleaning and one was out of support for 12 weeks and nearly died from a staph infection on a cavity. kevin paid that man's salary for 12 weeks and his medical bills. that's the kind of person this individual is, even though he doesn't have the kind of business to pick up that difference. kevin stepped in to make a ditches for that family. he is not alone in that regard. it is difficult to make a business work when you have to pick up the wages for someone who is not at work, not to mention their medical bills an expenses. another employ heee left their job for health insurance even he though the new job paid 1/3 less. another employee had been with kevin's company for 24 years.

relying on his wife's employer's health insurance. she got laid off. they will get cobe what insurance for a short period of time. kevin's insurance was covered by his wife. the pre-existing condition of being a baste cancer survivor, you tell me if they will get insurance. you don't need to be a ph.d. in health care issues to know what is going to happen. if we do nothing around here, under the present circumstances, that guy and his wife get nothing and they will be looking for any kind of help they can get. they, like many fellow citizens are looking to us gathered here. i don't know whether kevin is a d, r, liberal, conservative, moderate, blue dog, whatever else he may be, i don't think he thinks that way. i think all he thinks about is

to take care of his employees and his family. maria and i talked about no politics while they looked for help with the non-hodgkins lymphoma. we can't seem to come together, and we're attacking each other politically and here in this country this problem grows by the hour because all of us don't have to worry about that. i say it respectfully, but noptsless it affects the decision-making process when you can't take care of yourself and your family. you lose some some of the motivn that we ought to have in addressing these issues, so, mr. president, i will talk about this every day until we get to the point in coming together and addressing this issue. it is what i tried to do for 60

hours, replacing my dear friend senator kennedy in our committee. i want to thank my colleagues for working on this. i want to thank tom harkin from iowa who spent hours working on this bill to come up with ideas to reduce costs and improve the quality of health, and barbara mcculski, who herself is going through her own medical issues having broken her ankle in four places, i'm told, and working on quality issues that are critically important and jeff bingham who did work on coverage issues as well on how do we pay for this and come up with ideas that will reduce cost and make health and coverage more affordable and of course patty murray who did a great job in work be on workforce issues and jack reed who did a number of

things on the bill and sheldon whitehouse and bernie sanders did a great job, and sherrod brown of ohio, who was terrific as well. i want to thank my republican colleagues, even though they didn't vote for the bill in the end. they brought ideas that made it a better bill, lamar al lesmg an der, john mccain, lisa murkowski, orrin hatch, i'm going to miss someone, but the idea is that we came together and worked. we have a product now. we need one out of the finance committee. we need to get on to the business of working on this, in my view. you cannot sustain the present situation. the american people deserve better. they need the same kind of security, in my view, that we provided for ourselves, as members of the united states congress. i don't think the american people are going to accept the notion that they should have to live with the kind of fear and frustration associated with

having the kind of healthcare system in our nation, knowing that we could do better, so, mr. president, i thank my colleagues for the work we have done already and urge us over this break to listen to our constituents, hear their voices and come back to this chamber in early september with a serious determination to do what no other congress and no other administration has been able to achieve, and that is to vote for the national health care plan for our nation. i yield the floor. >> in the white house beefing friday, president obama talked about the recent arrest of harvard professor henry louis gates and the issue of race relations. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

>> i wanted to address you guys directly because over the last day and a half, obviously, there has been all sorts of controversy around the incident that happened in cambridge with professor gates and the police department there. i just had a conversation with sergeant crowley, the officer involved, and i have to tell you that as i said yesterday, my impression of him was that he was an outstanding police officer, and a good man, and thats was confirmed in the phone conversation, and i told him that, and i -- because this has been ratcheting up, and i obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, i wanted to make clear that in my choice of words, i think i, unfortunately,

gave an impression that i was maligning the cambridge police department or sergeant crowley specifically, and i could have calibrated those words differently. i told this to sergeant crowley. i continue to believe based on what i have heard that theres was an overreaction in pulling professor gates out of his home to the station. i also continue to believe based on what i heard that professor gates probably overreacted as well. my sense is you have got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident that should have been resolved or the way they would have liked it to

be resolved. the fact that it has garnered so much attention, i think is a testimony to the fact that these are issues that are still very sensitive in america, and so to the extent that my choice of words didn't illuminate but rather contributed more media frenzy, i think thats was unfortunate. what i would like to do then is make sure that everybody steps back for a moment, recognizes that these are two decent people, not extrapolate too much from the facts, but as i said at the press conference, be mindful of the fact that because of our history, because of the difficulties of the past, african-americans are sensitive to these issues, an even when you have got a police officer who who has a fine track

record on racial sensitivity, interactions between police officers and the african-american community can sometimes be fraught with misunderstanding. my hope is that as a consequence of this event, this sends up being what is called a teachable moment, where all of us, instead of trumping up the volume, spend a little bit more time listening to each other and try to focus on how we can generally improve relations between police officers an minority communities, and that instead of pointing accusations, we can all be a little more reflective in terms of what we can do to contribute to more unity. lord knows we need it right now, because over the last two days, as we have discussed this issue, i don't know if you have noticed, but nobody has been

paying much attention to health care. i will not use this time to spend more words on health care, although i can't guarantee it won't happen next week. i just want to emphasize -- one last point i would like to make. there are some who say that, as president, i shouldn't have stepped into this at all because it is a local issue. i have to tell you that that thing -- that part of it i disagree with. the fact that this has become such a big issue i think is indicative of the fact that race is still a troubling aspect of our society. whether i were black or white, i think that me commenting on this, and hopefully contribute ing to constructive as

opposed to negative understandings about the issue is part of my portfolio, so at the end of the conversation, there was a discussion about my conversation with sergeant crowley. theres was discussion about he and i an an professor gates having a beer in the white house. we don't know if that's scheduled yet, but we may put that together. he also did say he wanted to find out if there was a way of getting the press off his lawn. i informed him that i can't get the press off my lawn. he pointed out that my lawn is bigger than his lawn, but if anybody has any connections to the boston press, professor

gates an officer you couldly would like you to stom trom ping on the grass. .