CNN
posted: 2 HOURS 59 MINUTES AGO
(Sept. 8) - As President Obama gets set to address a joint session of Congress on the issue of health care reform Wednesday night, former President Clinton says it's time to forget about the Republican Party's role in the process entirely.
"The president's doing the right thing. It is both morally and politically right," Clinton told Esquire magazine in an interview published online Tuesday. "I wouldn't even worry about the Republicans. I'd worry about executing."
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Martin H. Simon, Getty Images
Former President Bill Clinton thinks Barack Obama may be on the verge of doing what his administration never could: passing comprehensive health care reform.
Though it increasingly appears the White House will win few if any Republican votes on a final health care bill, some members of the GOP say they remain open to supporting a potential version of the legislation, including Arizona Sen. John McCain.
"I look forward to what the specific proposals are," the former Obama rival said last week. "I think the disappointment a lot of Americans display is that we are not working together more."
Still, Clinton said Obama's chief worry should be ensuring the entire Senate Democratic caucus (59 members with the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy) is in support of the reform legislation, including Democrats from more conservative states, like Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.
Skip over this content "This electorate has suffered…and what they don't know is whether our guys are going to stand and deliver. And sooner or later you've got to stand and deliver," said Clinton.
The former president also compared Obama's initial months in office to his own perilous beginning, but predicted the current commander in chief would succeed where he had failed.
"Do I think he's doing the right thing, even though he's jamming a lot of change down the system? I do," he also said. "So there's a lot that's like my first year, but it's going to have a different ending — he's going to get health care reform."
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