New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday criticized former President Barack Obama during a small gathering as he mulls a run for president, saying that Obamas early days in office were a lost window.
Minutes later, in front of a larger audience, de Blasio praised the Affordable Care Act, Obamas signature legislative achievement, calling it progress. Obama pursued the health care legislation during his first two years in office and has been criticized at times for focusing more on health care than the struggling economy.
A handful of people were present in a second-floor private room of a Concord restaurant when de Blasio compared Obama to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who took office in 1933 amid the Depression and immediately began a series of actions that came to define the modern presidencys focus on a 100-day agenda. The mayor said Roosevelt was the only person who had a greater head of steam and political momentum and capital coming into office.
He, to his great credit, did the 100 days and the reckless abandon and understood that you had to achieve for people to build the next stage of capital to use for the next thing, de Blasio said. Obama, I think, nobly went at health care, but it played out over such a long time and it got treated politically as such a narrow instead of universal item, tragically, that it was a lost window. And Im not saying anything I dont think a lot of people feel.
By contrast, de Blasio promoted 2009?s Employee Free Choice Act as the kind of legislation worth pursuing by a new president, which raised another matter critical of Obama. The proposed law would have made it easier for workers to join unions, but it became one of labors grievances against Obama when he didnt press for its passage as Democrats controlled Congress the same period in which he pushed for the health care law.
I would argue, we wont be fooled again, he said. Employee Free Choice Act, or something like it, should be one of the very first things, because, grab that opportunity for structural change. Put that as a foothold, and a whole bunch of other things start to open up based on that.
De Blasio then spoke to about 40 people in a private room on the restaurants first floor. He didnt mention Obama by name to the larger group but was more complimentary to the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare.
Asked what he would do about the cost of prescription drugs, de Blasio said peoples health should be put first and in a collective way.
Right now we have health care is a commodity and … God bless the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act was progress, but its still tethered to a health insurance company-based system, he said.
(AP)
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