By MARY GILBERT
Barack Obama may have been hoping to redirect attention to his team's transition efforts today, but at a press conference in Chicago this morning, the spotlight was on the scandal surrounding the president-elect's former Senate seat. Obama was forced to preface the announcement of two key members of his health care team with disclaimers about his staff's contacts with Gov. Rod Blagojevich's office, and three out of four questions from reporters focused on the Illinois governor rather than the purported issue at hand.
"I was as appalled as anyone by the revelations earlier this week," Obama said of the allegations that Blagojevich was trying to sell the open Illinois senate seat to the highest bidder. The president-elect insisted that he has had no contact with the governor and pledged to gather all information on any contacts between his staff and the governor's office regarding the vacancy and release that information to the public in the next several days.
"I won't quote back some of the things that were said about me" in the transcripts of Blagojevich's conversations, Obama said. "This is a family program," he quipped, arguing that it was clear the governor did not find him or anyone on his transition team "amenable to any deal-making."
Obama maintained that there is no way for Blagojevich to go on and effectively serve the people of Illinois. He expressed his hope that the governor "come to the same conclusion" and resign from his post. He also urged the state legislature to find a quick resolution to the situation and find an appropriate way of selecting a new senator. "This Senate seat does not belong to any politician to trade. It belongs to the people of Illinois, and they deserve the best possible representation," he said.
Obama was able to turn to the task at hand, announcing the appointments of former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle to be secretary of Health and Human Services and director of the new White House Office of Health Reform, along with former HHS official Jeanne Lambrew to be Daschle's deputy in the latter office.
Daschle, in his new dual role, will be responsible not only for crafting a health care plan but also for implementing it. Calling him "one of America's foremost health care experts," Obama claimed that Daschle's knowledge of health care policy and extensive legislative experience make him uniquely suited to steer an effective reform package through Congress. As "the original no-drama guy," Obama said, Daschle is also someone who can be trusted to use the HHS Department to implement the new policy on the ground. Likewise, Obama credited Lambrew, a "nationally recognized "expert on Medicare and Medicaid, with having "a personality perfectly suited to reaching out and building consensus" on this difficult issue.
"It is hard to overstate the urgency of their work," Obama said of his new nominees, arguing that health care reform has to be a central part of his team's economic recovery plan. Citing statistics and framing the issue in moral terms, he argued that "we are on an unsustainable course, and it has to change. The time has come -- this year, in this new administration -- to modernize our health care system for the 21st century."
Daschle emphasized his intention to bring the American people into the process. The transition team has already begun using its Web site, change.gov, to organize house parties and meetings across the country where people can voice their opinions on health care. Daschle said that he will be attending some of those discussions and reporting back to the president-elect. People have also been invited to contribute their ideas and suggestions to the site's blog, and Daschle recently recorded a video directly responding to some of the recommendations being made.
Pressed by a reporter on how he plans to pay for an overhaul of the health care system, Obama spoke about first cutting costs and then finding ways to make the system pay for itself over the long run, though he was short on specifics. He stressed, however, that fixing health care must be "intimately woven" into his team's overall economic recovery plan. "We can't put this off because we're in an emergency," he said. "This is part of the emergency."
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