Now Is the Time

March 23, 2010  |  Posted by Danielle Belton

Look what happens when you fight, follow through and stick together? This past Sunday the House passed the most sweeping legislation in forty years -- health care reform. It didn't come easy. It was a bitter fight to the end with the votes coming down to party lines. No Republicans voted for it, but they didn't need to. The Democrats had the majority and the votes. It's time to see Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama do the same when it comes to national security.

During the health care debate, White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel tried to encourage the President to pare down his plans to make them more palatable to Republicans. Speaker Pelosi scoffed at this, and according to the New York Times, called the compromise "kiddie care." In the end, the President and Pelosi rejected Emanuel's idea and pushed for the health care reform that did pass the House this Sunday.

Now Emanuel is at it again, pushing for compromise on closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay. It's been reported in the press that he's in talks with GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham who says he wants to help close the prison if the President keeps in place Bush-Cheney era policies like detention without charged and the unconstitutional military commissions system. He's cutting deals and in this deal he could cut the Constitution's habeus corpus protections to shreds. Emanuel is trying to par down the Gitmo deal to make it more palatable for Republicans who have already been vociferous in their claim that nothing could ever make them vote to close Gitmo.

If President Obama and Pelosi want to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, they can't wait for the other side to come to the table. They need to reject the fool's bargain Emanuel is pushing with Sen. Graham (especially when even Graham is conceding that his deal is far from done), roll up their sleeves and fight for what's right.

It's time to give Gitmo the same treatment health care received. If President Obama and Congressional Democrats want to close the prison, they're going to have to do it on their own, by their own terms.

Here's what went down as Pelosi pushed the President to stand firm on his principles on health care.

From the New York Times:

The White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, once Ms. Pelosi’s right hand man on Capitol Hill, was pushing Mr. Obama to scale back his ambitions and pursue a pared-down bill.

Mr. Obama seemed open to the idea, though it was clearly not his first choice. Ms. Pelosi scoffed.

“Kiddie care,” she called the scaled-down plan, derisively, in private.

In a series of impassioned conversations, over the telephone and in the Oval Office, she conveyed her frustration to the president, according to four people familiar with the talks. If she and Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, were going to stick out their necks for Mr. Obama’s top legislative priority, Ms. Pelosi wanted assurances that the president would too. At the White House, aides to Mr. Obama say, he also wanted assurances; he needed to hear that the leaders could pass his far-reaching plan.

“We’re in the majority,” Ms. Pelosi told the president. “We’ll never have a better majority in your presidency in numbers than we’ve got right now. We can make this work.”

Democrats can do this again. They can find a way to close Gitmo and end the failed national security policies of the Bush-Cheney administration. They can do the right thing.

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