President Obama spoke to union workers on Labor Day at Laborfest in Milwaukee. He announced a long-term jobs program that would exceed $50 billion to rebuild roads, railways and runways. He also criticized Republicans for causing hard economic times.

Editor’s Note: Changing up the posting calendar here to allow the Saturday post to include the weekly President’s Radio Address. Week in Review now moves to Sunday to reflect on the previous week.

The week of course s was dominated by the build up, the event, and the analysis of the President’s Health Forum. In case you missed it, let’s get to the video highlights of the actual event.

Obama Takes on McCain

First, the McCain smack-down:

Harry Reid Setting the Stage:

In his opening remarks, Reid takes on the Republicans over their use of budget reconciliation to pass their own legislation, including the Contract for America.

House Speaker Pelosi Reminds Us of the Public Option

Good for her, Speaker Pelosi brings the conversation back to the campaign trail and the public option, restating its case.

Mr. President, I harken back to that meeting a year ago. At that time, Senator Grassley questioned you about the public option. And you said the public option is one way to keep the insurance companies honest and to increase competition. If you have a better way, put it on the table.

Well, I bring that up because we have come such a long way….As a representative of the House of Representatives, I want you to know that we were there that day in support of a public option which would save $120 billion, keep the insurance companies honest, and increase competition. [This describes the Medicare-rates version of the public option, not in the House bill. The current version saves $25 billion.] We’ve come a long way to agreeing to a Republican idea, the exchanges…because the insurance companies opposed the public option. They couldn’t take the competition.

We have in our bill [which includes a weaker public option], market-oriented, encouraging-to-the-private-sector initiatives. I think the insurance industry, left to it’s own devices, has behaved shamefully. And we must act on behalf of the American people. We have lived on their playing field all this time. It’s time for the insurance companies to exist on the playing field of the American people.

(more…)

As the Winter Olympics draw to a close this weekend, I just want to take a minute to congratulate all the athletes who competed in these games.  And I especially want to say how proud I am of all the American men and women have achieved over the last few weeks. (more…)

President Obama tackles the healthcare reform and provides a preview of his upcoming healthcare summit next week with Republicans.

The bottom line is that the status quo is good for the insurance industry and bad for America. Over the past year, as families and small business owners have struggled to pay soaring health care costs, and as millions of Americans lost their coverage, the five largest insurers made record profits of over $12 billion.

And as bad as things are today, they’ll only get worse if we fail to act. We’ll see more and more Americans go without the coverage they need. We’ll see exploding premiums and out-of-pocket costs burn through more and more family budgets. We’ll see more and more small businesses scale back benefits, drop coverage, or close down because they can’t keep up with rising rates. And in time, we’ll see these skyrocketing health care costs become the single largest driver of our federal deficits.