House wants formal rebuke for Wilson, Obama wants to let it go

The House of Representatives appears headed for a vote to formally rebuke Rep. Joe Wilson this week for heckling President Obama after the South Carolina Republican refused Sunday to apologize on the House floor.

"The House likely will take up a resolution," Brendan Daly, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told USA TODAY. "He violated the decorum of the House; it has to be resolved in the House."

Daly's comments came after Wilson said on Fox News Sundaythat he would not deliver a speech of apology on the House floor that some of his Democratic colleagues demanded.

"I have apologized to the president," he said. "I believe that is sufficient."

The standoff guarantees a continuation of the drama that began Wednesday night when Wilson shocked colleagues of both parties by shouting "You lie!" in the middle of Obama's nationally televised address to a joint session of Congress on health care.

On Fox, the congressman said he had "a town hall moment," referring to the rowdy meetings many lawmakers hosted in August on health care. He acknowledged that his interruption of the president was inappropriate. "I would never do something like that again," he said.

He said he's unwilling to reiterate those sentiments on the House floor. "I am not going to apologize again," he said. "I apologized to the president Wednesday night."

Obama has accepted the apology, and Pelosi said Thursday that she wanted to let the outburst subside. Other Democratic lawmakers, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus, insist that Wilson deliver a formal apology on the House floor. One of them is a Pelosi deputy, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat whose district neighbors Wilson's.

Wilson argued that a reprimand resolution amounts to "playing politics" and is "just what the American people don't want to see or hear."

The No. 2-ranking House Republican leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia, invoked Obama's own words to argue against a House vote on Wilson's behavior. In his speech Wednesday, the president "really said let's put the bickering aside," Cantor noted.