“I understand the risks,” he told me later. “But what are we going to do? Are we going to put our approval ratings on the shelf and admire them for eight years? Or are we going to spend down on them and try to get some important things done for the future? If we don’t take this up in the first two years, there’s a good chance we won’t get it done at all. We’ll end up kicking the can down the road, and millions more people will go without insurance and the whole thing will implode.”
