"Find common ground with Democrats in the next six weeks or we’re moving on without you and letting voters decide in November who was wrong."

The highly-touted health care summit convened by President Obama was conceived as a political bridge to allow for the public blame to be diffused and provide the foundation for moving forward with a scaled back health care reform package.  It didn’t quite turn out that way.

In the end, the President bluntly told the Republicans to get in line, or they would be steamrolled by the "reconciliation" procedure that even the venerable Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) claims would be highly abusive of the Senate process.

More important, there are a lot of Democrats in the House who may not be on board with that ultimatum because they fear voters will decide who is wrong, and it will be the Democrats.  Many insiders are shaking their heads about the insular arrogance displayed by the President and his Chicago White House Thugs.

For a few highly visible minutes, Obama turned his carefully scripted political theatre into a WWF cage fight with former campaign foe Senator John McCain, and smacked McCain down hard for daring to remind the public about the unseemly back-room deals struck with Louisiana, Nebraska and Florida, and other lucrative "carve-outs" for Vermont, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Michigan and Connecticut.

"Let me make this point John, because we’re not campaigning anymore.  The election’s over."

But McCain pressed on, and even forced Obama to concede how disingenuous it is to publicly flog abuses of the Medicare Advantage programs yet grant waivers for politically potent senior voters in Florida.

"I think you make a legitimate point."

Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) followed the opening statement of Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) with the strong rebuke, invoking the knuckle-rapping comment of former Senator Moynihan (D-NY).  Here is the actual statement:

"I say to my friend, Lamar, who I have great respect and admiration for, you’re entitled to your opinions, but not your own facts. Your opinion is something that is yours, and you’re entitled to that, but not your own set of facts. Senator Moynihan said that many years ago, and that’s what we have to do here today. Let’s make sure that we talk about facts."

Getting the facts would be a refreshing change, but then President Obama jumped on the Reid bandwagon to thrash Senator Alexander on his claim that the Congressional Budget Office had concluded the Senate health care plan would increase premiums.  Here is the first part of that verbal sparring:

"THE PRESIDENT:  But here’s what I want to emphasize is that even without the subsidies it’s estimated by the Congressional Budget Office that the plan we put forward would lower the costs in the individual market for the average person who’s just trying to buy health insurance and they don’t — they’re not lucky enough to work for a big company, would lower their costs by between 14 and 20 percent.

So, Lamar, when you mentioned earlier that you said premiums go up — that’s just not the case, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

SENATOR ALEXANDER: Mr. President, if you’re going to contradict me, I ought to have a chance to — the Congressional Budget Office report says that premiums will rise in the individual market as a result of the Senate bill.

THE PRESIDENT: No, no, no, no — let me — and this is an example of where we’ve got to get our facts straight.

SENATOR ALEXANDER: That’s my point.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, exactly. So let me respond to what you just said, Lamar, because it’s not factually accurate. Here’s what the Congressional Budget Office says. The costs for families for the same type of coverage as they’re currently receiving would go down 14 to 20 percent. What the Congressional Budget Office says is, is that because now they’ve got a better deal because policies are cheaper, they may choose to buy better coverage than they have right now and that might be 10 to 13 percent more expensive than the bad insurance that they had previously. But they didn’t say that the actual premiums would be going up. What they said was they’d be going down by 14 to 20 percent. And I promise you, I’ve gone through this carefully with the Congressional Budget Office. And I’ll be happy to present this to the press and whoever is listening, because this is an important issue.

SENATOR ALEXANDER: Well, may I — may I –

THE PRESIDENT: Let me just finish, Lamar. Now, the — what we’ve done is we’ve tried to take every single cost containment idea that’s out there. Every proposal that health care economists say will reduce health care costs, we’ve tried to adopt in the various proposals. There are some additional ideas that Republicans have presented that we think are interesting and we also tried to include. So, let me give you an example.

You mentioned the idea of buying across state lines, insurance. That’s something that I’ve put in my proposal that’s actually in the Senate proposal. I think that it shows some promise. You mentioned that as — that Mike Enzi has previously said, that he’s interested in small businesses being able to pool in the equivalent of some sort of exchange. So that’s where there’s some overlap.

But I just think it’s very important to understand that what we’ve done is to try to take every single cost containment idea that’s out there and try to adopt it in this bill. What I’d like to do is to see if we can proceed and have a very concrete conversation about what are the ideas that you guys have that you don’t think are in our bill to contain costs. And what I want to do is to see if maybe we can adopt some of those or refine what we’ve already done in order to further reduce costs.

SENATOR ALEXANDER: Mr. President, I’ve had my time –

THE PRESIDENT: And what I’d like to do also is to make sure that you maybe suggest some of the ideas that are currently in the bill that you think are good, because, Lamar, in your opening introduction, what I saw was sort of a — the usual critique of why you thought it was bad. But as I said, we’ve adopted a lot of the ideas that we’ve heard from your side of the aisle. So I hope maybe you could say, well, those are the ones that we think are good ideas; here are the things that we think are bad ideas, as opposed to just painting in broad brush. Go ahead.

SENATOR ALEXANDER: Mr. President, let me — let me show some respect for my colleagues here. They’re all here eager to speak, all sure they could do a better job than I could on any of these points. And what I would like to do is get back directly to you with why I believe — with respect — you’re wrong about the bill. Your bill would increase premiums, I believe; you say it wouldn’t. So rather than argue with you in public about it, I’d like to put my facts down, give them to you. Maybe other colleagues will say that. As far as Mike Enzi’s proposal, he is ready to talk about it; others are.

THE PRESIDENT: Good.

SENATOR ALEXANDER: So I appreciate the opportunity that Mitch and John gave me to talk. You’ve made some interesting points, and why not let other members of Congress have a chance to talk.

THE PRESIDENT: I think it’s a great idea. I’d like to get this issue settled about whether premiums are reduced before we leave today, because I’m pretty certain I’m not wrong. And you give us the information — and we’re going to be here all afternoon. I promise you we’ll get this settled before the day is out. All right."

This was a seminal moment for President Obama to show his bona-fides as a fighter for truth and justice.  He believed he had caught the Republicans red-handed in a bold-faced lie, and he was not going to let them slither off the national stage without being pilloried for their indiscretion.  How dare Senator Alexander mislead the public that way.

But then, the worst of circumstances arose when an aide handed the President a note, and then Obama backtracked hard.  Okay, so Senator Alexander was right about the CBO findings.

Quoting Senator Reid (via Senator Moynihan), you are entitled to your opinion Mr. President, you are not entitled to your own facts.