Charges that President Obama and House Democrats want to authorize "death panels" in their health care overhaul evoke a debate 19 years ago in which lawmakers first took up sensitive right-to-die issues.

The catalyst then was a controversial Supreme Court case, Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, in which a 5-4 ruling upheld a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that it was acceptable to require "clear and convincing evidence" that a young woman in a persistent vegetative state would not want to remain on life support for years. The court held "that the evidence adduced at trial did not amount to clear and convincing proof of Cruzan's desire to have hydration and nutrition withdrawn."

Then as now, lawmakers who wanted to make sure people knew about their rights to execute "living wills" or other advance directives clarifying their wishes in such a situation tried to insert language in a sweeping bill dealing with Medicare and Medicaid policy. And opponents quickly charged that the effort would inject government into sensitive personal care decisions.

President Obama moved his previously scheduled remarks on the economy from a gym at Fort Myer, Va. to the Rose Garden on Friday after the Labor Department reported that unemployment fell in July for the first time since April 2008, to 9.4 percent, in another sign the recession might be easing.

Sunshine, singing birds and colorful flowers surely evoke better times ahead, and helped put an exclamation point on a jobs report that exceeded the expectations of most economists and even the White House.

Obama took a victory lap of sorts, crediting the economic stimulus package (PL 111-5) and other Democratic initiatives for bringing the nation back from the brink. And he again plugged overhauling the health system, creating green jobs and bolstering education as necessary for building a sustained recovery.

"We have a lot further to go. As far as I am concerned we will not have a true recovery as long as we are losing jobs," Obama said. The president went on to rhapsodize about Americans he's met who are facing adversity but managing to keep their faith in the country and the future.

Such lofty talk doesn't mean Obama is finished playing the blame game, however.

By all accounts, President Obama didn’t use yesterday’s White House meeting with Senate Democrats to pressure Finance Chairman Max Baucus of Montana to hurry up and finish his health care bill. And the second-ranking Democrat on the committee, John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, said this afternoon that he doesn’t think Baucus will ultimately win the votes of the three Republicans he’s negotiating with.

But Rockefeller said Obama “very skillfully handled” a discussion of the most likely scenario: that sometime in September, Baucus will have to give up and the Democrats will have to try to pass the health care bill by using budget reconciliation procedures, which only require a 51-vote majority.

At a press conference on the health care bill, Rockefeller — who is not part of the negotiations on a bipartisan bill, even though he chairs the health care subcommittee — made it clear he doesn’t think Baucus will get anything except a weaker health care bill. “You just watch as the bill diminishes in its scope and its coverage and its ferocity to try to attack the problem,” Rockefeller said of Baucus’s talks with Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, and Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming.