Barack Obama postpones Pacific trip as healthcare vote looms

Barack Obama was today forced to postpone a trip to Australia, Indonesia and Guam in order to be in Washington for what he hopes will be the passage on Sunday of his healthcare bill, the biggest piece of domestic legislation on his agenda. The trip had already been delayed and shortened because of the bill. As the timetable on its passage slipped further, the White House bowed to what had become almost inevitable and pulled out of the trip. It is to be rescheduled for June. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, told a press conference that it would be bad manners to wait until Sunday morning to tell the Australian and Indonesian leaders he was not coming. Gibbs expressed confidence that the bill will be passed. He refused to confirm or deny a report that Obama told a group of Democratic members of Congress earlier this week that the fate of his presidency rested on passage of the bill. Although a handful of Democrats who voted against an earlier version of the bill in the House gave their support in the past 48 hours, the Democrats do not yet have the necessary 216 votes for it to pass. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was given a boost today as she lobbied fellow Democrats to support the bill. The Congressional budget office put the cost of health reform at $940bn over 10 years, marginally lower than had been expected and possibly low enough to be acceptable to Democratic fiscal conservatives. The budget office estimated the reform would reduce the federal deficit by $138bn over its first 10 years and $1.2tn in the second decade. Obama has been battling for more than a year to pass the legislation, which would extend healthcare insurance to more than 30 million Americans.