In a gaggle this afternoon with reporters, White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton told reporters that President Obama will continue to work on health care reform during his holiday vacation in Hawaii – and that Nancy-Ann DeParle, the director of the Office of Health Reform, will be pretty busy, too.
“The President was of course closely tracking the vote and as he said, was very pleased with the result,” said Burton. “He’s been involved throughout this process working with members of the House and the Senate; White House staff has been working with their staffs and you can imagine we’re going to continue to work with those folks as we go forward to ensure that we get this historic health care reform done for the American people.
“But, as you can imagine, even though it’s the holiday season I think things besides sugar plums are going to be dancing in the heads of people like Nancy-Ann.”
Burton added shortly afterward: “And so we’ve got two bills, one in the House, one in the Senate, they’re 95 percent similar. We’re going to be actively working to iron out the rest of the differences and get a bill passed and signed.”
As we reported today, the administration’s health care team will have talks with the Congressional leadership as early as next week.