Obama Says Dems Will Press Ahead On Reform Despite Republican Opposition

With Thursday's health care summit failing to produce any bipartisan breakthroughs, President Obama closed the session by indicating that Democrats would move forward with overhaul legislation with or without Republican support, the Washington Post reports. Obama said, "The question that I'm going to ask myself and I ask of all of you is, is there enough serious effort that in a month's time or a few weeks' time or six weeks' time we could actually resolve something?" He added, "And if we can't, then I think we've got to go ahead and make some decisions, and then that's what elections are for" (Murray/Kornblut, Washington Post, 2/26).

By the end of the more than six-hour meeting, it "seemed clear" that the summit "might have driven the parties even farther apart," the New York Times reports. Republicans said there was no chance that they would vote for Obama's bill, and Democrats openly discussed using the budget reconciliation process to pass the legislation without the help of the GOP (Stolberg/Pear, New York Times, 2/26). Budget reconciliation requires only a simple majority in the Senate.

Dems Weigh Reconciliation Options

Under the strategy being discussed by Senate Democrats, the House would pass the Senate's original health reform bill (HR 3590) in its current form and send it to Obama for his signature. Democratic leaders would also agree to a set of corrections to the Senate's bill, which would then be sent to the House with a letter signed by at least 51 senators pledging to pass the fixes through reconciliation. The letter is "intended to assure reticent House Democrats" that the Senate would act on the modifications, CQ Today reports.

However, it is still unclear if 51 senators would agree to sign the letter, and some Democrats in the House are not entirely confident that the Senate would follow through with the modifications, CQ Today reports. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), a chief deputy whip for the Democratic Party, said, "I think there are still serious questions among House members across the ideological spectrum about what reconciliation would mean, both politically and policy-wise." She said she has directed her staff to compile a list of outstanding issues "of concern in the House" that could not be resolved in a reconciliation bill. DeGette added that the list was "really short" but that "you don't know until you raise it whether the parliamentarian is going to rule that it has a deficit effect and therefore is in order."

DeGette said there might be a possibility to address the issue of abortion coverage in a reconciliation bill, but "a lot of people assume" that it would be ruled out of order. "We still need to meet with the White House and our leadership to talk about this issue, and I do not think this issue should be left to the end like it was before" when the House passed its version of the legislation (HR 3962), DeGette said. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), an abortion-rights opponent who introduced an amendment to the House bill that would ban abortion coverage in plans receiving federal subsidies, says that he and as many as 10 other antiabortion-rights Democrats who supported the House bill would not support the Senate bill without changes to its abortion language, which is less restrictive than the House bill's language (Hunter/Wayne, CQ Today, 2/25).


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