Obama returns to health, energy fights

L’AQUILA, Italy (AP) — Barack Obama’s problems back in Washington, largely brought on by fellow Democrats, have hardly gone away while he’s been off summiting in Europe and visiting Africa. In fact, they’ve gotten worse.

The president returns home this weekend vowing to keep fighting for his health care initiative, which has hit bumps in the Democratic-controlled House and Senate as lawmakers quarrel over what it should include how to pay for it. He’s also trying to guide a bill to overhaul U.S. energy policy through the Senate, where members are unlikely to have been encouraged by the modest concessions he won on climate change from fast-growing nations.

And, as Obama acknowledged at a news conference Friday after the G-8 summit near Rome, the global recession continues to drive up social needs in the United States and other countries while making it tougher for governments to raise money to address them.

Obama, who will fly home late today from Ghana, spent the week working on arms control, global warming and other knotty issues with an almost dizzying succession of leaders from nearly 40 countries. But Congress “is always tougher” to deal with, he told reporters with a smile.

Those words might have been a flattering bow to the lawmakers controlling the fate of his top domestic priorities. But they underscored the challenges that got even more challenging in the few days he was away.

That was especially true of his efforts to overhaul the nation’s health care system by covering virtually every American, streamlining medical treatments and costs and giving people more insurance options.

“It is my highest legislative priority over the next month,” Obama said.

But things have not gone well lately. Conservative House “Blue Dog” Democrats are demanding significant changes before supporting the legislation. They want more cost reductions and greater focus on rural health care, among other things, and their demands forced the House to delay action.

In the Senate, meanwhile, a potential bipartisan deal was undermined this week when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid signaled displeasure with its call for a new tax on employer-subsidized health benefits.

With the goal of an early August accord looking in doubt, Obama said Friday: “I never believe anything is do-or-die. But I really want to get it done by the August recess” for Congress.

Obama offered no new negotiating stands but indicated he would continue to press Americans at large to demand action from Congress.

“My biggest job is to explain to the American people why this is so important and give them confidence that we can do better than we’re doing right now,” he said.

“We are closer to achieving serious health care reform that cuts costs, provides coverage to American families” and “allows them to keep their doctors and plans,” the president said. “We’re closer to that significant reform than at any time in recent history. That doesn’t make it easy.”

Obama said he expects to succeed in “tough negotiations in the days and weeks to come.”

Another domestic priority is a wide-ranging energy bill, narrowly approved by the House last month but now facing hurdles in the Senate. Various Senate factions want concessions that could undo the narrow majority cobbled together in the House. Differences between the two chambers would have to be reconciled before a bill could be sent to Obama’s desk.

In Italy, Obama repeatedly told world leaders about the U.S. House legislation, which calls for deep reductions in America’s greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades. If America can do it, he told fast-growing countries such as China, India and Brazil, then they should be willing to make commitments, too.

But those countries largely balked, leaving Obama with only modest gains in the effort to reduce heat-trapping gases worldwide by 2050.

That setback in climate talks could rob the president of political momentum that the House vote had triggered.