Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) took to Twitter on Thursday to assure that delaying passage of healthcare legislation beyond the August recess would give lawmakers more time to improve the bill.
The Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders had been pushing hard for the bill to reach the president’s desk by the August recess. But leaders of both chambers of Congress backed off the deadline today.
The Virginia Democrat followed suit, tweeting:
News abt health care pushed beyond Aug recess is OK: gives us more time to make sure it controls costs & improves quality
“The Republicans have asked for more time, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) at noon on Thursday.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) expressed similar sentiments, saying “I’m not afraid of August…It’s a month.”
President Barack Obama assured that he was comfortable with the delay at an Ohio town hall event on healthcare reform Thursday. “But I don’t want a delay just because of politics,” he clarified.
Reid and Pelosi’s statements, however, run counter to Obama’s previous calls for swift passage of the legislation.
Obama spent Thursday in Ohio touring the Cleveland Clinic and holding a town hall event designed to sell the public on the need for sweeping healthcare reform.
The trip followed a primetime press conference that aired Wednesday night in which the president said “I’m rushed because I get letters every day from people that are being clobbered by healthcare costs, and they ask, ‘Can you help?'”