Back To Work On Obamacare

House Democrats are saying an Obamacare reconciliation deal will be ready by this weekend.

Two of the House's most influential chairmen say that health care negotiations between the House, Senate, and President Obama have come so far, that they'll be ready to send a package to Congressional scorekeepers this weekend.

Congress Daily caught up with Rep. George Miller (D-CA)--chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee--and Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY)--chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee--who both acknowledged that a compromise could be just around the corner.

"We hope to be able to send in the next couple days our changes to CBO," Miller said (subs reqd).

That's good news, because the President's numbers are still looking on the bad side.

And although most people still believe that Obama's agenda will eventually benefit the country, his approval rating has fallen to 47 percent amid a widespread consensus that Washington's response to the downturn has so far helped the wealthy and powerful more than it has average families. Shirley McCarter, a homemaker and poll respondent in Altus, Okla., encapsulated that view with a brisk verdict on the government's agenda: "It's not helping the little guy," she said. "It almost seems like rewarding the people who made the bad decisions."

Obama has a problem with Wall Street and with Main Street.

Nearly half of those polled say they made "significant reductions" in their spending over the past year. Nearly one-third say they were forced to withdraw money from savings or pension accounts to make ends meet. And 31 percent say they lost a job or were unemployed for a sustained period. Just over one-fifth say that during the past year they went "without health insurance for a sus-tained period."


About one in seven of those surveyed say they fell behind on their mortgage or rent at some point in the past year--and 5 percent say they suffered through foreclosure. Only 23 percent of those polled say they have not "experienced any significant changes in lifestyle or financial security."

In follow-up interviews, many respondents spoke with a sharp edge of apprehension about the accumulating strain of extended joblessness or reduced income. In these conversations, the recession seems like a storm that has just grazed some lives, briefly unsettled others, and rattled still others to their foundations.

Randy Howard is a disabled factory worker in Millville, N.J., whose wife works at a Kmart. Her hours have been cut by a fourth, squeezing the family's budget. "How to fix this mess?" Howard asked rhetorically at one point. "I don't really have a clue." Likewise, Shannon McCauley, a Philadelphia homemaker, has seen her husband's employer cut his hours by more than half. Now, she said, he is piecing together part-time jobs to keep the family afloat. McCarter, whose husband is in the military, worries about the family's debt and sees her neighbors anxiously retrenching on small luxuries such as hiring someone to mow the lawn. "We've got a lot of family members who are struggling economically. And they've been struggling for a long time," she said, "but it's hitting much heavier now."

These are your swing voters, Dems.  These are the folks who will either stop supporting you in November, or worse, go to the polls and vote for the Republicans instead.  These are the people you're screwing over with your bailouts and your refusal to help out the country when you instead decide to reward bank CEOs instead of average people.  They vote.  And they outnumber you.

Get them some help, guys.  Or in 2010 they are going to turn this country back over to the Republicans, and they're going to end up finishing the disaster they started and will wipe out the middle class in this country for good.