United States

Obama had entered office vowing to reduce partisanship in Washington, but he made little progress in that direction in his first year; indeed, the $787 billion stimulus package had been passed in the House of Representatives without a single Republican vote. With Democrats holding substantial majorities in both houses, Obama allowed congressional leaders to shape important legislation, and Republicans, claiming that they were being largely excluded from substantive negotiations on key bills, took what most Democrats saw as an obstructionist approach, earning the nickname the “Party of No” from liberal commentators.

In the meantime, a populist reaction emerged among libertarian-minded conservatives that was generally opposed to what they considered excessive taxation, to illegal immigration, and to government intervention in the private sector. This “Tea Party” movement gained steam during the summer of 2009, when town hall meetings were held across the country to debate proposed health care insurance reform, the signature issue of the Obama presidential campaign.

Negotiating health care reform

Republicans presented a united front in opposition to Democratic proposals for health care reform, branding them a “government takeover” of health care and protesting that the price tag would be devastatingly high. Some Republicans also claimed—falsely—that the Democratic plan would establish “death panels” that would deny coverage to seniors. Although there was also strong opposition to various aspects of the plan within the Democratic Party, the House of Representatives passed a sweeping reform bill in November 2009. The Senate was more circumspect, with Obama seemingly ceding the initiative to the so-called “Group of Six,” a group of three Republican and three Democratic senators led by conservative Democrat Sen. Max Baucus. The bill that was ultimately passed in the Senate called for considerably less change than the House bill (most notably excluding the “public option” through which a government-run program would have provided lower-cost competition for private insurance companies). It just barely survived a filibuster attempt by Republicans, holding all 58 Democrats plus the Senate’s two independents, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

Before the two houses could attempt to bridge the differences in their bills, the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate as a result of the victory of Republican Scott Brown in January 2010 in the special election in Massachusetts held to replace interim senator Paul Kirk (a Democrat), who had been appointed to the seat following the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy—who, ironically, had committed much of his career in government to health care reform. Although the prospects for passage dimmed, the president and the Democratic leadership, especially Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, pushed on, with Obama convening a special summit of Democrats and Republicans to debate the merits of the bills.

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)

In March 2010, having secured the support of a sufficient number of House Democrats who had been opposed to aspects of the Senate plan (most notably pro-life advocates led by Rep. Bart Stupak, whose fears that the plan would loosen limits on abortion funding were allayed by Obama’s promise of an executive order), Pelosi engineered passage of the Senate bill in a 219–212 vote (with all Republicans and 34 Democrats in opposition) on Sunday night March 21. A subsequent bill, proposing “fixes” to the Senate bill, was then passed and sent to the Senate, where Democrats hoped to obtain passage through the use of a relatively seldom-used procedure known as reconciliation, which requires a simple majority for passage. With the outcome of reconciliation still in the balance, on March 23 Obama signed into law the historic legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Senate passage of the bill of proposed fixes proved arduous, as Republicans introduced more than 40 amendments in an attempt to force another vote in the House. All those amendments were defeated in votes along party lines, and on March 25 the bill was passed by a 56–43 vote; however, because of procedural violations in some of its language, the bill went back to the House. There it passed by a 220–207 vote. No Republicans in either house voted for the bill.