Billionaire Ted Turner has his own opinions of US President Barack Obama, who he thinks made a crucial mistake by prioritizing health care over climate change legislation. Turner believes that if Obama had focused on climate change, there would have been a bill now sitting in Congress that is of more substantial importance than the president’s current health care proposals. The founder of Time Warner Inc.’s CNN news network says that Obama instead stuck with his healthcare bill, which was a very huge mistake.
The president made promises early during his pre-election campaigns to actively fight climate change, but instead focused his administration’s resources into policies on health care, energy, education and the economy once he took oath. After Obama’s health care bill was enacted as law, albeit through serious episodes of deliberation, earlier this year, the president’s “cap and trade” bill pushing for the reduction of greenhouse gases is still sitting pretty in the Senate. The president himself is not so confident about the bill getting past the Senate before 2013.
The 72-year-old Turner stresses that the climate change bill should have been given higher priority than the health care bill because it covers more lives around the planet as compared to health care that’s limited in the United States. Meanwhile, a bill that would create cap and trade programs to kill greenhouse gases and bring about a market in pollution allowances already passed Congress in 2009. The bill, however, got rejected by the Senate on grounds that it would hurt the economy more by increasing energy prices.