The fierce and fateful battle over healthcare reform has forced US President Barack Obama to delay his departure on a trip to Indonesia and Australia by three days, to March 21.
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs made the announcement on his Twitter feed on Friday, a day after saying the trip would not be postponed, reflecting the fast-shifting debate on an issue testing the president’s political credibility.
Gibbs also said Obama’s wife, Michelle, and daughters, Malia and Sasha, would no longer join the president on a poignant journey to Indonesia, where he lived as a boy for four years with his mother.
“The president will delay leaving for Indonesia and Australia — will now leave Sunday — the first lady and the girls will not be on the trip,” Gibbs wrote.
In his daily briefing, Gibbs was repeatedly pressed on whether the president’s threatened effort to pass healthcare reform could further delay the visit to Asia but he refused to budge.
“The president is going on a trip on the 21st,” Gibbs said repeatedly.
The trip now figures to be an even faster sprint through Indonesia and Australia than previously scheduled, though the White House says it must go on as both nations are vital to Obama’s bid to revive US Asia-Pacific policy.
Obama has billed himself as America’s first “Pacific president” and his journey had been timed to coincide with his daughters’ school’s spring break to allow the president to take his family.
The fact he must leave his wife and daughters at home may take the gloss off the trip for Obama and disappoint his hosts.
Gibbs, however, said even in Obama’s original itinerary, there had never been plans for the president to visit his old school or the house where he lived when he was in Jakarta as a boy between 1967 and 1971.
But making the journey — with or without his family — was paramount, the White House stressed.
“The United States has been absent from the Asia Pacific region. We can’t lead in this region of the world without strong bilateral relationships with Indonesia and Australia,” Gibbs said.
The president is also due to stop in the Pacific island of Guam, an unincorporated US territory, on the way to Asia, to see American troops.
Reacting to the announcement, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd showed understanding.
“The president is welcome in Australia at any time. He knows that, the United States government knows that,” Rudd said. “If this visit is delayed by several days, if it’s brought about by the necessities of the health reform process in the United States, I really understand that.”
The White House had been pressing the House of Representatives to hold a key vote on Obama’s flagship healthcare reforms before his original departure date of March 18, but it became clear that that deadline was unrealistic.
The delay will also likely fan fresh doubts about the capacity of Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives to put together a majority of votes for the embattled effort to overhaul the US’ mostly private healthcare system.
Obama has spent over a year trying to cajole Congress into passing the kind of sweeping healthcare reform that has eluded Democratic presidents for decades.
In recent days, he has escalated the fight, staking his own political credibility and authority on passing the bid to expand access to healthcare for millions of Americans and to cut costs and rein in insurance giants.
In a delicate piece of political choreography, Obama wants the House of Representatives to pass a Senate healthcare bill, then for both chambers to endorse a package of “fixes” to harmonize the final legislation.
Obama, who lived in Jakarta with his late mother Ann Dunham in the 1960s, said last year in Singapore that he was looking forward to visiting his old haunts in Indonesia.
He was invited to make the trip by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and both sides have said they plan to use Obama’s childhood ties to the country to further tighten a crucial pan-Pacific relationship.
Obama is hugely popular in Indonesia, but earlier on Friday several dozen Muslim students protested in front of the US embassy in Jakarta against his visit to the world’s largest Muslim-majority country.
“Just like Bush, he is a war president and an enemy of Islam,” protest coordinator Fikri Ahmad Irhamul said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS