Obama, Clinton and Biden stump for Corzine in N.J. gubernatorial race

The national healthcare reform debate came to New Jersey this week in the persons of President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton.

Biden appeared at Middlesex County College on Oct. 19, Clinton made appearances at campaign rallies in Collingwod and New Brunswick for Gov. Jon Corzine’s re-election on Tuesday, Oct. 20, and Obama made a campaign stop on Wednesday, Oct. 21. The current president is scheduled to come to the Garden State again on Nov. 1 to help with a last-minute push for the incumbent governor before the Nov. 3 election here.

The upcoming Nov. 1 stop will be Obama’s third in New Jersey on behalf of Corzine including his appearance at the PNC Arts Center in Holmdel on July 16, and the Oct. 21 visit. Biden said Corzine will fight for healthcare reform if he gets re-elected, and both he and Obama need “men like Jon Corzine” if they have any hopes of getting the healthcare and insurance reforms that millions of New Jerseyans and other Americans want accomplished.

Right now Obama and the reform movement are coming off the recent high of their bill getting votes of approval from the U.S. Senate Finance Committee last week. That means that the version of the bill drawn up by Sen. Max Baucus, (D-Mont.) the Finance Committee Chairman, that garnered some bipartisan support thanks to Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, will go back into committee where legislators from both houses of Congress will try to reconcile it with other versions that were produced by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The cost of healthcare and insurance reform had been the main sticking point in the Senate before the Oct. -13 vote that approved Baucus’ bill, but that is not as big an obstacle as it once was now that the Congressional Budget Office released its review report stating that it would not cost the trillions of dollars that its Republican and right wing conservative opponents had projected it would. The true cost, according to the CBO, will be $829 billion over the next 10 years and would reduce the national budget deficit by $81 billion.

That price tag is billions of dollars less than the $1 trillion or more that government officials and others thought it would cost when Obama and his supporters initially took up the reform cause. In addition to the revised numbers, experts also said the reform would cover 94 percent of Americans, not including illegal immigrants.

The potential sticking point now as Congress works to hammer out a final bill that will be acceptable to the majority of legislators involved and their constituents across the country, is whether or not there will be a so-called “public option” that many Democrats in the House of Representatives and their liberal and progressive constituents want.

Of course the Republicans in both houses have expressed their opposition to a public option they fear will expand the role of the federal government even further into ordinary Americans’ lives in addition to adding trillions of more dollars to the federal deficit that is theirs and former President George W. Bush’s legislative legacy.

Obama said the creation of a public option to offset the seeming monopoly of large insurance companies by offering Americans a much cheaper alternative to their expensive policies is just that; an option.

Although he said he would like to see a public option because it is crucial to reforming the entire insurance industry by opening it up to competition and thereby lowering costs for consumers nationwide, he also said he would not let his desire to see that ideal outcome get in the way of the reality of achieving universal insurance coverage and access to quality healthcare for all Americans.

Reverend Reginald Jackson of Saint Matthews AME Church on Oakwood Avenue recently endorsed Corzine for re-election. He said he too is interested in getting healthcare and insurance reform passed through Congress and enacted into national law by Obama during his first term in office, but that might not happen if Republican Christopher Christie or Independent candidate Chris Daggett get elected on Nov. 3 instead of the incumbent.

Jackson said he is glad that Obama, Clinton and Biden have shown such an interest in the New Jersey gubernatorial race because he knows that the Republican Party and its Republican National Committee are paying attention to the outcome too. He the fact that he is an Obama supporter who wants to see the president succeed factored into his decision to endorse Corzine for Governor of New Jersey, and so did the fact that he supports healthcare reform.

“It looks as if the Democrats are going to lose the governorship in Virginia and if they were to lose New Jersey too people would think it was a reflection on President Obama and his administration,” he said. “I think that’s why the president came to New Jersey Wednesday, Oct. 21, and again on Nov. 1. I think we are going to get healthcare through Congress which will be a major achievement; we’ve been trying to do that for 60 years.”

Jackson said the national recession and the country’s economic woes are the biggest issues in most voters and peoples’ minds right now, an the fact that there does not seem to have been much progress on that front in their lives is what could push Virginia back to the Republican Party. He said he does not believe that will happen in New Jersey even though he knows that Daggett has the power and opportunity to take votes from Corzine and Christie.

“Next year I believe we will begin to see a decrease in unemployment and that will help the president’s standing,” he said. “When you’re going through an economic recovery the last thing that comes back is jobs or employment. But what are the ramifications nationally if the Democrats lose Virginia? I think that Daggett’s candidacy is going to be a factor in the outcome of this election because he will take votes from one of the other candidates or both of them. It’s going to be interesting.”

On Oct. 19, Biden basically said the same thing to hundreds of students at Middlesex College in Edison. He said he and Obama need good partners like Corzine and the other members of the New Jersey Congressional delegation like Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th Dist.) and Rep. Rush Holt (D-12 Dist.) who were also on hand at the Oct. 19 campaign stop if they want to get healthcare reform and the other items on their progressive agenda like deficit reduction and putting an end to the economic recession passed.

"I literally picked up the phone and called Jon Corzine and said 'Jon, what do you think we should do?'" he said. "The reason we called Jon is because we knew he knew about the economy, about world markets, about how we needed to respond."

Corzine, for his part, said he was glad to be getting the support of Obama, Clinton, Biden, and all the rest. He said he wants to get re-elected to help them get America back on its feet and to continue his unfinished business in New Jersey.

"The election is not about me, it's about the future,” he said. “It's about our children. Do we really want the failed policies of the past? There's only 14 days to election day. I ask you to stand strong with me."

Leroy Jones, Corzine’s Essex County Campaign Coordinator and the Chairman of the East Orange Democratic Committee, said he does not believe the governor has anything to worry about. He said healthcare and insurance reform and the economy are the main issues locally and nationally, and the Democrats are on the right side of both those issues regardless of what Christie and the Republicans or Daggett or anyone else says.

Jones said he was looking forward to Obama’s visits on Oct. 21 and Nov. 1, because he knows that is going to whip the state’s voters into a “frenzy” that will almost guarantee a large voter turnout on Nov. 3.

“Chris Christie said he would not take stimulus dollars from the federal government and that would be devastating to New Jersey,” he said. “That’s been part and parcel of the Republican strategy to thwart the Democratic president’s agenda, and hypocrites don’t typically change their hypocrisy. That’s how Republicans have been conducting themselves: They’re the party that throws the stone but hides the hands that threw them.”