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Schieffer: Obama "Has to Get Specific"

President Obama is going to try to take back control of the health care debate next Wednesday night with a major address to a joint session of Congress. CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer was on "The Early Show" this morning to explain why the president feels he had to give the speech and what he hopes to accomplish.

"Here's what's going on. When Hillary Clinton was the first lady under her husband, Bill Clinton, she designed with some experts a plan for universal health care coverage, they did it in secret, they gave it to the Congress, and it dropped like a stone. Congress wanted nothing to do with it," Schieffer said. "It may well be that the Obama people learned the lessons of that all too well. So the president did not get specific. He just laid down general principles about what he said he wanted to see. But Congress never really got details on what he was prepared to go to the mat for."

Schieffer said Mr. Obama now "has to get specific" and tell Congress "exactly what he's for and what he's prepared to back them on."

"When you're asking the Congress to vote for something that probably is going to include tax increases of one kind or another, they have to know, is the president, especially the ones in their own party… going to be with them on that to the end? Because no member of Congress wants to make a controversial vote like that only to find out later that the limb they were on was sawed off behind them by the president himself," he added.

Above you can watch the full analysis from Schieffer, along with a report from CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante, on "The Early Show."

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