Health Care Debate Enters Final Stage

WASHINGTON (March 15) -- Declaring that "every proposal has been put on the table, every argument has been made," President Barack Obama made a last-ditch appeal Monday for his health care reform plan as Democratic leaders huddled behind closed doors here to ferret out enough ayes for a vote later this week.

In a rally at a senior center in Strongsville, Ohio, Obama addressed those over 65 directly in words meant not only to reassure seniors that health care reform won't come at their expense but also to counter Republican claims that Democrats mean to gut Medicare to subsidize health insurance for younger people without insurance.

"Now, the opponents of reform have tried a lot of different arguments to stop these changes. But maybe the most insidious is the idea that somehow this would hurt Medicare," Obama said. "Every senior should know: There is no cutting of your guaranteed Medicare benefits. Period. This proposal makes Medicare stronger, makes the coverage better and makes its finances more secure. Anyone who says otherwise is misinformed -- or is trying to misinform you."

Obama spoke even as the über-organizer of the tea party movement, Dick Armey, offered the White House some good news -- and some bad -- on his health care bill Monday.

Democrats "can probably force" through their health care, Armey said in a speech at the National Press Club. But if they do, he warned, they will pay by losing control of the House and possibly the Senate next fall.

"The American people don't want this in any iteration," said the former House Republican majority leader and head of the advocacy group FreedomWorks. Armey accused Obama and Democratic leaders of "romantic egalitarianism" and using strong-arm tactics on wavering House members to get their support for the make-or-break vote later this week.

The former Texas lawmaker, who brought along his trademark Stetson cowboy hat and his friends and old Washington hands like C. Boyden Gray, spoke a day ahead of what he calls a "People's Surge Against Obamacare 2.0." Tea party activists are expected to descend on House office buildings Tuesday to urge legislators to vote against the health care reform bill. The amateur lobbyists are being instructed to "please make sure that you find out where your congressmen is, and then go inside and ask his staff for a face to face meeting," according to FreedomWorks' Web site. "Stay there as long as you have to in order to get a meeting."

The "surge" is being touted as a preview of April 15, federal tax day and the one-year anniversary of the movement's first mass mobilization against what it sees as big government run amok.

"These are ordinary Americans who are scared [Washington politicians] will wreck America," Armey said. "These are not kooky birds."

Called "the outsider's insider" in a recent New York Times magazine profile, Armey left Congress in 2003 only to re-emerge as a player yet again last year when his group helped organize anti-tax rallies around the country. Blasted by progressives as a front for "corporate astroturfing," Armey's FreedomWorks made no secret of its role in stoking populist anger against "death panels" at town hall meetings last summer and in rallying troops for a protest in Washington.

Still, "when you have grassroots," he said, "nobody's in charge."

Armey has campaigned for tea party challengers in Republican primaries but says his aim isn't to foster a third party as much as to make his old party more responsive to Americans outside the Washington beltway. Perhaps, but the tea party movement has grown so popular among fiscal conservatives that it has topped the Republican Party in popularity in at least one recent poll.

In a freewheeling talk at the Press Club, Armey railed against Republicans for "drinking backsliders' wine" when it comes to advocating small government and fiscal restraint. He called leaders of both parties "inept." He dismissed the GOP establishment for backing moderate candidates when the people who "live in America" preferred conservatives like Senate candidate Marco Rubio in Florida.

There are signs GOP leaders are listening. House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said on "CNN Sunday" of tea party activists that it was his job "to listen to them" and welcome them into the GOP fold.

Armey calls the tea party a big tent whose central stake is fiscal conservatism. He and his troops have stayed away from social issues like abortion, gay marriage and gun control that could distract from what they consider the main principle of smaller government.

In language that will likely be recalled in the upcoming debate over immigration, Armey minced no words in condemning Republicans over their stance.

"Who in the Republican Party was the genius who said now that we have identified the fastest-growing demographic in America, let's go out and alienate them? This is a nation of immigrants. ... There is room in America," he said.

"When I was Republican leader, I saw to it that Tom Tancredo could not get on a stage because I saw how destructive he was," Armey said of the anti-immigration former congressman. "Republicans have to get off this goofiness. Ronald Reagan said, 'Tear down this wall.' Tom Tancredo said 'Build that wall.' Who's right? America is not a nation that builds walls. America is a nation that opens doors, and we should be that."

Armey also predicted this latest conservative wave would not ebb like others he had lived through, starting with Barry "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" Goldwater's run for president in 1964 through Ronald "morning in America" Reagan's victory in 1980, Ross Perot's failed third-party presidential bid in 1992 and the Republican takeover of Congress two years later on the strength of the Contract with America Armey helped author. He said the new movement, which is writing its own Contract From America, is the first powered by social networking and the Internet.

"This wave is not likely to ebb," he said, noting that even if Republicans win control of one or both houses of Congress, these "normal, everyday Americans" will not lose momentum. "This wave is not going to allow some Republican who is soft on his commitment to our constitutional limitations on big government to get the [presidential] nomination" in 2012," he said.

Armey was scheduled to speak at the press club in December but the event was called off because of poor ticket sales. The cancellation made "The Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC after AlterNet reported an "apparent lack of interest" among reporters.

Adam Brandon, Armey's spokesman, explained at the time to this reporter, who organized the lunch as a member of the press club's speakers committee, that a tea party rally on Capitol Hill and the upcoming Christmas holiday were to blame for the poor turnout. Monday's luncheon, held in a smaller room, was a sellout, with nine TV cameras recording Armey's words.