All the best of the editorial pages, all in one place.
Speaker of the House meets with President Barack Obama. Pelosi is charged with getting that healthcare bill through the House. Photo credit: Office of the Speaker of the House
The New York Times: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi yesterday introduced a series of fixes to the Senate healthcare bill that make it better; it’s still not perfect, but it is the “best chance in decades of fixing this country’s broken health care system.” The House needs to pass it: “Like most historic legislation, the process leading up to these last votes has been agonizingly long, relentlessly frustrating, and far too easy for opponents to misrepresent and demagogue. But a willingness to compromise and good sense should prevail. The country needs comprehensive health care reform.”
The Washington Post: Voting for the healthcare reform bill in the House represents a “huge gamble” – but one representatives need to take. “[M]oving ahead with health reform is fraught with risk. The question is whether the measure carves out enough of a toehold on cost containment to justify that risk. We think it does. And this is the second chief selling point: The measure contains important seeds of reform.”
The Boston Globe: This week, Ukraine’s news government announced that it would be legislating against the country joining any military alliances, thus ending its six-year quest to join NATO – and marking a distinct shift away from the West, but perhaps towards isolation. And that might be a good thing: “The new direction Ukraine has chosen can ease the way for a US-Russian agreement to reduce the two sides’ nuclear arsenals and improve chances for Russian cooperation to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.”
The Miami Herald: “In a democracy, people can disagree.” In Cuba, they can’t. Cuba’s brutal repression of dissent needs to be answered by the world’s democracies: “Only a concerted effort by democratic governments – from the left and the right – can show Raúl and Fidel Castro that their free ride of terror is coming to an end.”
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