OBAMA (AND FRIENDS) AT THE BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE.

Yesterday, Obama sat down with the Business Roundtable, the interest group that acts as the trade association for America's larger employers. What I didn't know until the pool reports came out is that Obama wasn't the only one to sit down with the CEOs: Peter Orszag, Carol Browner, and Arne Duncan spoke with them as well. So not only did they hear the Preisdent, but they got personal presentations on health reform, cap and trade, and education. The meeting was a specific play for their support on the administration's 2009 priorities.Now that the transcripts are out, this comment of Obama's is getting a lot of attention, though I'm not really sure why:

Look, the budget document that we put forward is a 10-year document. We are, like any organization -- just like all of yours, we have to do long-term planning even as we're addressing short-term issues. If we don't do the long-term planning, then we end up having more short-term issues again and again and again and again.So we don't anticipate that every piece of health care is done this year. We think that we've got to get the process and get in place a structure and a framework and a funding approach and work out a lot of these details. But it's going to be implemented over time. We're not going to have instant health IT all next year. The same is true on the energy front. Under the cap proposal that we have it wouldn't even start until 2012, where we're going to be out of this recession -- or you'll have somebody else speaking to you in 2013. (Laughter.)But if we don't start now, if we wait until -- to have the debate in 2012, and then suddenly it turns out that oil is at $150 a barrel again, and we say, oh, why is it that we didn't start thinking about this and making some steps now to figure this out. Well, that's what Washington does. You guys could not run your business that way. And so the notion that we are doing some long-term planning now and trying to get this town to think long term, that somehow that's a distraction just defies every sound management practice that I've ever heard of.

Some have read that as evidence that the Obama administration isn't expecting a comprehensive health reform bill this year. That would be a contradiction from all of their previous statements. But the lines on health IT and cap and trade suggest that the quote was more basic: Even if you pass health reform in 2009, it won't be implemented for years yet. No one disagrees with that point. Obama is saying that a delay of a year isn't just a delay of a year. If you want health reform implemented by 2012, it needs to be passed by 2009. Every year you wait to pass the bill is many more years you wait to see its impact. Full transcript after the fold.