Obama's Health Care Takes A Back Seat To Jobs

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Health Care Moves To Back Burner


Democrats in Congress said all the right things Thursday to show they were dutifully heeding the president’s call to keep plugging away on a health reform bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada convened a strategy session with his top lieutenants. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California pledged to leap over any hurdle that got in her way.

But listen more closely, and it’s clear health care is already falling to the back of the legislative line, behind the Democrats’ feverish new focus on jobs and the economy.

Health care reform didn’t even make the cut when New York Sen. Chuck Schumer ticked off the party’s priorities Thursday.

“The president said jobs is the No. 1 issue before us in 2010,” Schumer said at a news conference. “In fact, the three top issues on our agenda this year are jobs, jobs and jobs.”

Health care activists who hoped to wake up Thursday to find President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address had rallied Democrats behind his plan instead found that the party seemed as confused and divided as it was before the speech – perhaps more, now that lawmakers know they may not be able to count on Obama to lead the way.

In fact, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu downgraded the chances of passing a health care reform bill after the speech, saying Thursday morning that it was on “life support” without any clear direction from the president.

It was only a few weeks ago that Democrats were pushing hard – remember the Christmas Eve morning Senate vote? – to get a bill to Obama before Wednesday’s speech. The speech has come and go, and so has any sense of urgency among Senate Democrats to pass a bill any time soon.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana said Democrats would not abandon health care, but it could take until the spring or summer — a timeline he later said he shouldn’t have specified. And earlier in the day, Reid would provide only a nebulous target for passing a bill, committing to do it “this year.”

“This is not a one-year Congress; this is a two-year Congress, and we have had a number of extensive meetings of trying to come up with a path forward,” Reid said. “We are going to move forward on health care. We’re going to do health care reform this year. The question at this stage is, procedurally, how do we need to get where we need to go?”

Democrats spent more than a year setting deadlines on health reform because they knew they needed to do so. The mantra for months was that they had to pass a bill as soon as possible, certainly before 2010, because the political will would diminish as Election Day drew near.

Congressional aides say there is a legitimate process under way to find a way to finish the job on health care. In Reid’s meeting, senators reviewed several options, including the use of a procedural maneuver known as reconciliation to pass fixes to the Senate bill on a majority vote. Reconciliation is receiving the most scrutiny, aides said, but senators are still wading through complicated procedural and political questions to decide whether it makes the most sense.

But it’s been 10 days since the Republican win in the Massachusetts Senate race derailed the bill, and Democrats still appear to be taking their time on figuring a way forward — even though “time” was long described as the enemy of health care reform.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) predicted Democrats could settle on a strategy before their next weeklong break begins Feb. 15.

“I think some things may happen before we leave here in the next two weeks,” Harkin said. “That we’ll see some movement, that we’ll see some things start to jell on how we’re going forward.”

There were growing signs that relations between the House and Senate were fraying, as Pelosi acknowledged serious differences remain between the two chambers’ bills.

“We’re talking about the fact that our bills are about 75 percent the same, perhaps 80. The president optimistically says 90,” Pelosi said. “Maybe he knows something I don’t know about what’s going to happen in the Senate. ... But I would not call them minor tweaks, because that would imply that there’s something there that we could easily accept, except for some minor tweaks. No. It’s more serious than that.”

Pelosi announced that she would go in a slightly different direction than Reid to protect the interests of her members. She laid out a strategy to push small-ball health initiatives that won’t replace the push for comprehensive health care reform but would allow lawmakers to vote on elements of the legislation that they deem important, such as eliminating the antitrust exemption for insurers.

“Some of these sidebar issues are issues that are very important,” Pelosi said. “They can be done. They can move quickly. And that’s not about one thing over the other. That’s about time. Everything is about time.”

And in comparison to Reid’s sometime-this-year approach, Pelosi made a no-holds-barred pledge to getting it done. “We’ll go through the gate,” Pelosi said. “If the gate’s closed, we’ll go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole-vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in. But we’re going to get health care reform passed for the American people.”

Wavering House Democrats have expressed their unease with party leaders for weeks. Some have even told their superiors to abandon the health care push altogether, House aides said. A Senate aide also said members were considering stepping back from health care for a few months, although it was not among the top options.

But the speaker and her team have been telling members not to jump ship — either in public or in private — so they have room to negotiate with the Senate and the White House.

“We’re not going to put it down,” Baucus said. “We’re moving expeditiously. And expeditiously means quickly, solidly, thoughtfully.”


Sources: Politico, MSNBC