Obama downplays lapsed deadlines while pledging Sept. health push

President Obama downplayed the missed deadlines in Congress for passing preliminary healthcare reform, saying he’d be available come September to answer “any question” lawmakers have about legislation.

“We did give them a deadline, and sort of we missed that deadline,” Obama said at a town hall in North Carolina this afternoon. “But that’s okay.”

The president had continued to push the House and Senate to pass first drafts of healthcare bills as late as last week, though Blue Dog Democrats in the House and ongoing Finance Committee negotiations in the Senate had laid those deadlines to waste.

Obama asserted that the August recess would give lawmakers ample time to “read the bill,” picking up on a Republican criticism that the thousand-plus page bill hadn’t been amply vetted by members of Congress before they were expected to vote on it.

The president did pledge, though, to work with members of Congress to answer their questions about the legislation after the break — potentially signaling that he may come down on some key issues in negotiations on which he’d previously been reluctant to comment.

“When we come back in September, I will be available to answer any question that members of Congress have,” Obama said. “If they want to come over to the White House and go over line by line what’s going on, I will be happy to do that.”

The president said the “best case scenario” would allow him to sign healthcare legislation by late September or mid-October.