THE TELEGRAPH: Barack Obama is scaling back his plans for far-reaching legislation in an attempt to save his party from disaster in elections later this year.
After a difficult first year, the president is trying to dissociate himself from complex bills which have been held up by political disputes and tarnished his image as an agent of change.
The shift began as he launched an 11-page plan for health reform, which cherry-picked the best of what has already passed the House of Representatives and the Senate.
A bill to introduce a carbon tax has also been quietly dropped because of fears it would burden business during the recession, while immigration reform designed to offer 12 million illegal immigrants a "path to citizenship" has been put in the legislative deep freeze.
The president will instead concentrate on a modest jobs bill, tax cuts for the middle classes and campaign finance reform.
His biggest legislative push will remain health care, but will involve a new slimmed-down strategy.
The revised plan, costing $950 billion (£610bn) over ten years, is designed to make health insurance more affordable and extend coverage to 30 million more Americans.
It would give the federal government the power to regulate excessive rises in insurance premiums but omits a government-run insurance plan sought by liberal Democrats. It also dropped "backroom" deals for individual senators and their states that did so much to alienate public support.
However it is uncertain that even his scaled-down plan can pass Congress, since Republicans are largely opposed and some Democrats, who were supportive last year, are having second thoughts with midterm elections approaching fast. The president may have to settle for a solution even more modest than his fallback. >>> Alex Spillius in Washington | Monday, February 22, 2010
