Obama Defends Health Care, CIA Probe on Media Blitz
Also vows to work harder to catch bin Laden
Updated 9:45 AM EDT, Sun, Sep 20, 2009
President Obama went on the defense Sunday on everything from health care to the CIA interrogation probe, saying on five Sunday talk shows that the policies he's begun to enact will have a positive effect on American citizens.
Obama again repeated his pledge to health care and promised citizens his bill wouldn't be all talk like some legislation of the past -- but that it would seriously reform the "big problem" of health care provision in the country. He also shot down GOP notions that requiring people to get health insurance and fining them if they don't would amount to a tax increase.
"I absolutely reject that notion," Obama told George Stephanopolous on ABC's "This Week." "This isn't a radical plan," he said.
The commander in chief also flatly refused to oblige the seven past CIA chiefs who asked him this weekend to halt the probe of the agency's harsh interrogation procedures used post-September 11. "Ultimately, the law is the law, and we don't go around sort of picking and choosing how we approach it," he said on CNN's "State of the Union."
Other topics on the table included Obama's reaffirmation to again capture 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and the economic recession, which the president wouldn't say had officially ended and instead left up to Fed Chief Ben Bernanke to declare over.
Obama's interviews, taped Friday at the White House, mark a political milestone that saw Obama become the first president ever to appear on five Sunday network shows in the same morning.
He appeared on "Meet the Press," "This Week with George Stephanopolous," 'State of the Union," "Face the Nation" and Univision's "Al Punto."
Read more: Politico
Copyright Associated Press / NBC Philadelphia
First Published: Sep 20, 2009 8:38 AM EDT
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