US PRESIDENT Barack Obama has promised to overhaul the American healthcare system by the end of this year – without Republican support if necessary.
Speaking in Indiana after a town hall meeting to promote his economic policies, the president said he would prefer to sign a bipartisan healthcare Bill but it was not yet clear if negotiations with Republicans would prove fruitful.
“Sometime in September we’re going to have to make an assessment,” he told MSNBC. “I promise you, we will pass reform by the end of this year because the American people need it.”
Mr Obama told his audience in Elkhart, which experienced the sharpest unemployment rise in the US last year, that he would issue $2.4 billion in taxpayer grants to create electric cars and tens of thousands of jobs.
“For too long, we failed to invest in this kind of innovative work, even as countries like China and Japan were racing ahead,” he said.
“That’s why this announcement is so important – this represents the largest investment in this kind of technology in American history.”
Mr Obama identified energy, innovation, healthcare and education as the pillars of the new US economy he wants to build from the wreckage of the recession.
“Now, there are a lot of people out there who are looking to defend the status quo. There are those who want to seek political advantage. They want to oppose these efforts.
“Some of them caused the problems that we got now in the first place, and then suddenly they’re blaming other folks for it. They don’t want to be constructive. They don’t want to be constructive; they just want to get in the usual political fights back and forth,” he said to applause.
“But you and I know the truth. We know that even in the hardest times, against the toughest odds, we have never surrendered. We don’t give up. We don’t surrender our fates to chance. We have always endured. We have worked hard, and we have fought for our future.
“Our parents had to fight for their future; our grandparents had to fight for their future. That’s the tradition of America.
“This country wasn’t built just by griping and complaining. It was built by hard work and taking risks. And that’s what we have to do today.”
Republicans, who have opposed all Mr Obama’s key proposals, from the economic stimulus package to healthcare reform, see in the president’s declining popularity an opportunity to make gains in next year’s congressional elections.
“President Obama is now looking like a mere mortal, as opposed to someone who previously exceeded gravity,” said John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
“I think there will be a significant number of voters who, leading up to 2010, will wonder if they voted for someone they didn’t get.”