On yesterday’s health-care summit:

After seven and a half hours, the president reveals the purpose [of the meeting] practically in the last minute, in which he said: We’re going to give it a month or so. We’re going to see if we can agree.
Obviously they are not going to agree. Obviously this was all about giving the appearance of reaching out for other ideas. And it was all about setting the premise for a pivot to reconciliation, i.e., meaning the Democrats are going to try to ram it through on a procedural trick in the Senate and try to cobble the votes required in the House.
Now, I think the Democrats actually helped themselves in the process. They did have a seven and a half hour show in which it appeared as if they were genuinely open. I think it was quite cynical, but I think it allowed at least them to argue to independents, who want to see a kind of an ecumenical effort, [that]: We tried. We went the last mile. And we failed. So in order to get health-care reform, we had to go by this partisan procedure.
However, on the other hand, the Republicans really helped themselves. The argument [was that they are] the party of no, they have no ideas, they are against anything, they’re nihilists.
In fact, they spent seven hours, I think, presenting a very strong case. They’re knowledgeable. They have ideas. They are interested in reform. But they have differences.
Lamar Alexander was dazzling. Paul Ryan was rapier sharp in rebutting all of the smoke and mirrors that the Democrats had presented.
I think it’s going to help the Republicans in November on their image. But in the short run, it’s going to help the Democrats in trying to ram the thing through.

On reconciliation:

It’s a trick because Senator Byrd, who invented it … said it was never intended for anything like this. It is a trick in the sense that it was … designed as a way to harmonize budgets and … raise taxes and cut spending. It was never designed as a way to execute a reform for a sixth of the economy.