Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.
I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.
Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.
I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.
Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is.

That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.
And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.
That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.
But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?
Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

WASHINGTON  – The patient isn’t dead yet.

A few more months of wrangling and indecision, and health care legislation to remedy America’s coverage and costs problem could be drawing its last gasps.

As Congress returns to work this week, President Barack Obama and lawmakers have three broad options – competing treatment plans for a patient whose vital signs are growing weak. It’s not clear which one, if any, will work.

Democrats – and liberals in particular – want heroic measures and large scale intervention. They think the legislation needs big new ideas such as a public insurance plan that would have government offering coverage to middle-class workers and their families.

Republicans want a conservative treatment to relieve the worst symptoms of America’s health care malaise. They’re proposing help for small business owners and the self-employed, and some GOP lawmakers probably could go along with expanding current programs that cover the poorest of the poor. But no new government plan and no guarantees that everyone would be covered.

A third group, including moderates from both parties, supports a holistic approach that would put the country firmly on track to coverage for all. They believe government should help some middle-class people through subsidies for private coverage, but that a federal insurance plan isn’t needed. Some are willing to include malpractice changes that appeal to conservatives.

Obama will say which way he wants to go when he addresses a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night.

Above all, the president wants to avoid failure. But an argument on the merits may fail to persuade lawmakers polarized by the town hall brawls of August.

If nothing gets done, “it’s a disaster politically” for the Democrats, said Gerald Shea, the AFL-CIO’s top health care policy expert. “Unfortunately, I think that’s what’s behind a lot of the Republican opposition.”

The action will speed up once Congress is back.

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Max Baucus, says he’s ready to march ahead. For months, Baucus, D-Mont., has tried to reach a compromise within a small but influential group of senators from both parties. He faces a Sept. 15 deadline, and has signaled he’ll move with or without a deal.

His committee would be the last one to consider health care legislation before the full House and Senate take over.

Deliberations in the Finance Committee are seen as a critical test because it reflects the composition of the Senate as a whole.

In the House, Democratic leaders have indicated they will not schedule a vote until the end of September. Many House members don’t want to stick their necks out if it looks like the Senate is hopelessly deadlocked. Still, once House Democrats decide to go forward, they should be able to pass their bill.

There won’t be any guarantees in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to pass legislation of any consequence. It doesn’t look like Democrats have them right now.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will try to meld the Finance Committee’s bill with legislation written by liberals on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee before he takes something to the full Senate. Debate could last for weeks, with hundreds of amendments.

Reid’s most important decision will be whether to use a maneuver that allows the Senate to pass the financing elements of the bill with just a simple majority. Even so, he’d probably still need 60 votes to pass companion legislation with other essential elements -such as how people would buy their health insurance.

The shortcut strategy could backfire politically. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said Sunday his constituents are already concerned that Congress is rushing things. “If we went to some sort of a parliamentary shortcut, I think they would be even more alarmed than they are right now,” Nelson told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Even if the legislation clears every hurdle, it could be Christmas before it reaches Obama’s desk. Republicans say Congress should scrap what’s been done so far and start over, without deadlines.

“There don’t seem to be any checks and balances on a runaway government in Washington, D.C.,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. An immigration overhaul fell under its own weight during the last administration, and “health reform seems to be doing the same.”

For all the disagreements, the core elements of the congressional bills are similar.

They would set up a new purchasing pool to make it easier for individuals and small businesses to buy insurance, and offer government subsidies to make premiums more affordable. People would be required to get health coverage, through an employer, a government program, or on their own. Businesses that don’t offer coverage would have to contribute in some way.

The changes are complicated, and it would take the better part of a decade to phase them all in. The cost – offset by spending cuts and tax increases – is about $1 trillion over 10 years.

As the scope of the legislation has gotten clearer, more voters seem to be having second thoughts. Polls show that support for action this year plunged over the summer, from 61 percent in June to 53 percent in August, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey.

Obama is hoping he can turn that around. If he doesn’t, lawmakers worried about getting re-elected next year will have another option to consider: Should they pull the plug?

WASHINGTON – The furor surrounding President Barack Obama’s upcoming address to the nation’s schoolchildren is “just silly,” his education chief said Sunday, and a conservative senator who led the Education Department in the first Bush administration suggested teachers make it a civics lesson.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s department has taken heat for proposed lesson plans distributed to accompany Tuesday’s speech. He acknowledged that a section about writing to the president on how students can help him meet education goals was poorly worded. It has been changed.

Debate about conservative objections to the speech has dominated cable television and talk radio for several days, signaling again the stark divisions in the country both over politics and social issues.

Some opponents to the speech claim Obama would try to indoctrinate schoolchildren with what they call his “socialist” agenda.

“That’s just silly. They can go to school. They can not watch. It’s just, you know, going an 18-minute speech,” Duncan said.

He said Obama had no intention beyond talking “about personal responsibility and challenging students to take their education very, very seriously.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander, education secretary under President George H.W. Bush, said he understood “some of the concern, because, you know, people say, `Oh, here’s another Washington takeover.’

“But of course the president of the United States should be able to address students. And of course, parents and teachers should decide in what context,” said Alexander, R-Tenn.

He added, “If I were a teacher, I’d take advantage of it, and I’d put up Lincoln and Eisenhower and Reagan and teach about the presidency, and then I’d put up the head of North Korea and say, ‘In that country, you go to jail if you criticize the president. In our country, you have a constitutional right to do it.”‘

Duncan said the guides distributed to schools “were put out by teachers, for teachers. And there is one that wasn’t worded quite correctly. It was talking about helping the president hit his goal of having the highest percent of college graduates by 2020. He’s drawn a line in the sand in that.

“We just clarified that to say write a letter about your own goals and what you’re going to do to achieve those goals. So again it’s really about personal responsibility and being accountable, setting real goals and having the work ethic to see them through,” the secretary said.

Declaring that viewing the speech is “purely voluntary,” Duncan said the hubbub is something “I frankly don’t pay any attention to.” Rather, he said, he is focused “laser-like” on the big problems in the U.S. education system.

The secretary said the speech text will be posted on the White House Web site on Monday.

“There’s nothing political about it, and it’s a shame that some people have tried to politicize it,” Obama adviser David Axelrod added.

Duncan spoke on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and Alexander appeared on “Fox News Sunday.” Axelrod was on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

WASHINGTON  – Five months after President Barack Obama, with great fanfare, called for a world free of nuclear weapons, a crucial step toward that goal is running into resistance.

There is little indication Obama will have the votes he needs for a cornerstone of his nonproliferation efforts: Senate ratification of a nuclear test ban treaty. If Obama can’t get the treaty approved, he probably will have a hard time persuading the rest of the world to rein in nuclear weapon programs.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, an advocacy group based in Washington, said the Obama administration needs to “work faster and harder” to build support in the Senate.

The absence of progress comes as a backdrop to the special U.N. session to be chaired by Obama later this month. The summit Sept. 24 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly’s annual ministerial session will seek broad consensus on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

Political realities have made focusing on the test ban treaty difficult. Obama’s top priorities these days are passing a massive health care overhaul and overcoming violence in Afghanistan. On arms control, his administration is now focused on another goal: securing a successor to a bilateral treaty with Russia that expires in December.

The treaty with Russia would amount to a small step toward the goal of a nuclear-free world that Obama outlined in April in a sweeping speech before a crowd of 20,000 in Prague. In the same speech, he promised to focus on the test ban treaty.

“My administration will immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification,” he said.

The administration says it is now working behind the scenes to build congressional support for the test ban treaty.

“We are pushing very hard on all fronts,” White House spokesman Mike Hammer said.

But supporters of that goal outside the administration say they have not seen evidence of urgency.

“If this pace continues, there is little chance he will achieve the goals he outlined,” said Joseph Cirincione, president of the San Francisco-based Ploughshares Fund, which advocates the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Negotiated in the 1990s, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty specified 44 nuclear-capable countries that must give formal approval before it can take effect. Eight countries besides the United States have yet to ratify the treaty: China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan. In 1999, during the Clinton administration, the Senate rejected ratification overwhelmingly, with all but three Republicans voting against.

Many countries see ratification of the treaty as a test of U.S. commitment to phase out nuclear weapons.

If the Senate doesn’t ratify it, Obama could have difficulty persuading countries to support other goals, such as strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, at a review conference in May. The administration also wants a treaty to prohibit further production of weapons-grade nuclear material.

The White House says it already has achieved goodwill because other countries have seen that the U.S. is committed to reducing the world’s nuclear weapons.

“We have heard from many countries that President Obama’s ambitious nuclear agenda and multilateral approach have created a very positive international climate and goodwill for strengthening global nonproliferation efforts and advancing arms control,” Hammer said.

The administration needs 67 votes in the 100-member Senate to ratify the test ban treaty, which means it will need support from some of the 40 Republicans. No Republican has yet declared support, and key Republicans remain skeptical.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., a well-regarded arms control and nonproliferation expert, recently told The Associated Press that the administration should build its case and wait at least until the second half of 2010 to push for a vote. But some supporters say that will be too close to congressional elections in November, and they worry that after that Obama may not have the large Democratic majority he now enjoys.

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who opposes deep reductions in arsenals and led opposition to the 1999 vote on the test ban treaty, remains opposed. He believes a test ban would constrain the United States and undermine its technological superiority. Kyl and other opponents also say it will be difficult to verify whether other countries are conducting secret tests and to ensure that the U.S. arsenal can be maintained and improved without testing.

The administration argues that technological advances, including the capability of computer simulation, have made testing unnecessary and have also made it easier to detect tests in other countries. It has commissioned a National Academy of Sciences report on how to maintain the arsenal and an intelligence estimate on detecting nuclear explosions. The administration hopes the reports, expected early next year, will help win ratification. Kyl told the AP he believes he can defeat Obama’s push for the treaty.

“I think they are dead set on ratifying it,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it is going to happen.”

The resistance comes as the administration is already deep into negotiations with Russian counterparts to finish a follow-on agreement to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires in December. The administration hopes ratification of that treaty will give the issue momentum.

Prospects look much better for that treaty, with some Republicans already on board. Kyl said he could support it if the administration backs funding to modernize nuclear stockpiles and infrastructure.

STONEVILLE, N.C.  – A North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to saying he was going to assassinate President Barack Obama.

The Rockingham County sheriff’s office says Steve Lee Stone pleaded to charges Wednesday of communicating threats, resisting a public officer and misusing the 911 system. He was sentenced to two 45-day jail terms, which were suspended, and 18 months probation.

Police say the 44-year-old man called a 911 dispatcher twice from his trailer about five miles south of the Virginia border in late July and said he was going to assassinate the president. He did not identify himself.

Sheriff’s deputies and a Secret Service agent investigated the caller’s identity. Stone was interviewed by deputies at his trailer in Stoneville.

Deputies say Stone became combative during the interview and they were forced to use a stun gun and arrest him.

RALEIGH, N.C. — The “Organizing for America” bus is making a final stop in Raleigh today before heading back to Washington, D.C.

The bus tour is part of President Barack Obama’s 50-state push for health care reform before Congress heads back to Washington. Members of the community and grassroots groups will join speakers like Congressman David Price and Organizing for America Deputy Director Jeremy Bird.

Those against the president’s plan will also be at the event. NBC 17 spoke with Randy Dye who is a member of Triangle Conservatives Unite. He said his group, other conservatives and independents will be there to welcome the bus into town.

The “Let’s Get It Done: Raleigh National Bus Tour Stop” begins at 5:45 p.m. at the Progress Energy Performing Arts Center Plaza in downtown Raleigh. Doors open at 5 o’clock and the event is scheduled to run until 7:00 p.m.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will deliver a major address to Congress next Wednesday, confronting critics of his health care overhaul and trying to buck up supporters on an issue that has been slipping from his control under withering Republican-led attacks.

The speech will underscore an acceleration of Obama’s direct involvement in proposals to overhaul the nation’s health care system. Many allies have been urging him to be more specific about his plans and to take a greater role in the debate, and White House aides have signaled he will do that in the address to a joint session of lawmakers in the House chamber.

The speech’s timing suggests that top Democrats have all but given up hope for a bipartisan breakthrough by Senate Finance Committee negotiators. The White House had given those six lawmakers until Sept. 15 to draft a plan, but next week’s speech comes well ahead of that deadline.

It will come a day after lawmakers return from an August recess in which critics of Obama’s health proposals dominated many public forums. Approval ratings for Obama, and for his health care proposals, dropped during August.

Senior adviser David Axelrod had said Tuesday that Obama was considering being “more prescriptive” about what he feels Congress must include in a health bill.

WASHINGTON – The Republicans’ top negotiator on health care signaled Wednesday that bipartisan talks would continue despite White House suggestions that he and another GOP bargainer have not acted in good faith.

Jill Kozeny, a spokeswoman for Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, said the accusations were unjustified. She said Grassley and five other Senate Finance Committee members – half Republicans, half Democrats – will hold their scheduled conference call Friday to try again to reach common ground on a far-reaching health care bill that could win broad support in the full Senate.

Lawmakers and health care activists have grown increasingly pessimistic in recent weeks that the “Gang of Six” can agree on a workable bipartisan bill that would win approval in the Democratic-controlled Congress. White House adviser David Axelrod added to the negative spirit Tuesday when he suggested that Grassley and Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., have not acted in good faith because they sharply criticized Democratic plans during the August recess.

Kozeny said Wednesday: “Attacks by political operatives in the White House undermine bipartisan efforts and drive senators away from the table. Anyone who’s working on an alternative plan – one that would actually drive down costs and not drive up the deficit – knows how difficult the issues are.”

Some Democrats feel President Barack Obama has been too vague and standoffish in discussing his health care goals. Now he’s thinking of throwing more details and personal weight into the debate, which polls indicate Republican opponents have been winning in recent weeks.

Faced with falling approval ratings and increasingly impatient with the Senate negotiations, Obama is considering a speech in the next week or so in which he would be “more prescriptive” about what he feels Congress must include in a health bill, Axelrod said Tuesday.

The speech might occur before the Sept. 15 deadline that the White House gave Senate negotiators to seek a bipartisan bill, Axelrod said.

Congress reconvenes next Tuesday after an August recess in which critics of Obama’s health proposals dominated many public forums. Axelrod indicated that Obama would not offer new proposals but would be more specific about his priorities.

“The ideas are all there on the table,” Axelrod said. “Now we are in a new phase, and it’s time to pull the strands of these together.”

Obama has called for innovations such as a federal health insurance plan to compete with private insurers, but he has not insisted on it.

Axelrod condemned comments made in August by Grassley and Enzi. Their remarks, Axelrod said, “were not exactly consistent with good faith negotiations.”

Enzi, in a radio address Saturday, said Democratic proposals would restrict medical choices and make the country’s “finances sicker without saving you money.”

In an August fundraising letter, Grassley asked for “support in helping me defeat Obama-care.” He said Democratic-drafted bills would be “a pathway to a government takeover of the health care system.”

Kozeny said Grassley was simply restating his well-known opposition to a government-run health insurance plan. Congress’ August recess was brutal for Obama and his allies, as lawmakers faced raucous crowds denouncing Democrats’ health proposals. When Congress comes back next week, Democratic leaders hope to change the dynamic by holding quiet, closed-door sessions with nervous colleagues and arguing that far-reaching health care changes can be good politics as well as good policy.

They also hope GOP-led opposition has peaked. But that’s far from clear, and some Republicans are eager to hand Obama his first major defeat.

A new CNN/Opinion Research poll found that 53 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama’s handling of health care, while 44 percent approve. In March, far more people had approved than disapproved.

A separate Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday found that more Americans oppose the Democrats’ health care proposals than support them. But more than half are confident that Obama will do the right thing regarding health care.

That compares with 45 percent who have at least a fair amount of confidence in Congress’ Democratic leaders regarding health care, and 39 percent who have confidence in GOP congressional leaders. Liberal groups are holding hundreds of events in a bid to show that a robust overhaul is more popular than August’s news reports would suggest.

The message lawmakers will hear when they return to Washington “will be very different than what they heard when August started,” said Jacki Schechner of Health Care for America Now. One idea her group will stress, she said, is that the politically smart vote, even in toss-up districts, will support widespread changes meant to expand health insurance coverage and options.

Some Democrats say congressional leaders will have to trim more costs from the health bills even though that would antagonize liberals and make it harder to cover uninsured people, one of Obama’s top goals.

“That’s the kind of thing we’re going to look at,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., a member of the leadership who is tasked with getting his colleagues re-elected. Republicans approach Labor Day feeling upbeat about the ground they gained during August.

“After a disastrous month at home, the fact that Democrats’ new health care strategy is to hide in Washington from the people who elected them to get health care passed shows what bad shape they’re in,” said Antonia Ferrier, spokeswoman for House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio.

WASHINGTON  – President Barack Obama says that while swine flu vaccine will be voluntary, the government will “strongly recommend” that people get it.

Obama was briefed Tuesday on the nation’s preparedness for swine flu by senior officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.

He spoke afterward from the Rose Garden.

Obama said that the federal government is preparing at all levels for this fall’s expected surge in swine flu cases.

He said, “I don’t want anybody to be alarmed, but I do want everyone to be prepared.”

A White House report suggests up to half the U.S. population could be infected. Vaccine development is ongoing and it is likely to be available by October.