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Democrats divided on health care overhaul

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-22 15:06

WASHINGTON: House Democrats put their divisions on display over the details and timing of health care legislation Tuesday despite fresh attempts by President Barack Obama to hasten a compromise on the issue that looms increasingly as a major test of his clout.

President Barack Obama arrives to speak on health care reform in the Rose Garden at the White House, Tuesday, July 21, 2009, in Washington. [Agencies]

With a self-imposed deadline for action in jeopardy, the Democratic leadership juggled complaints from conservatives demanding additional cost savings, first-term lawmakers upset with proposed tax increases and objections from members of the rank-and-file opposed to allowing the government to sell insurance in competition with private industry.

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"No one wants to tell the speaker that she's moving too fast and they damn sure don't want to tell the president," Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., a key committee chairman, told a fellow lawmaker as the two walked into a closed-door meeting. The remark was overheard by reporters.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., vowed weeks ago that the House would vote by the end of July on legislation to meet two goals established by Obama months ago. The president wants legislation to extend health coverage to the tens of millions who now lack it, at the same time it restrains the growth in the cost of health care far into the future.

The president also has vowed that the legislation will not swell the deficit, although a senior administration official told reporters Tuesday that the pledge does not apply to an estimated $245 billion to increase fees for doctors serving Medicare patients over the next decade.

Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, said that was because the administration always assumed the money would be spent to avert a scheduled cut of 21 percent in doctor's fees.

At the White House, Obama and moderate and conservative Democrats verbally agreed on "some type of hybrid of a Medicare advisory council," said Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark. Obama last week urged lawmakers to adopt something along those lines, saying it would slow the growth in the health care program for seniors.

In the Senate, a small group of bipartisan lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee met behind closed doors, pursuing an elusive agreement.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, described the process as a grinding one. "Basically, it's filling in the blank pages. There are about a thousand" of them, she said.

It was unclear when - or whether - the White House or Democratic leadership would intervene in hopes of expediting legislation that has yet to materialize despite months of negotiations led by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

But increasingly, it appeared that the best Democrats could hope for this summer would be a vote in the full House by the end of the month, and some sort of agreement on a bipartisan plan in the Senate before lawmakers head home for their summer vacation.

Even that remained a difficult challenge, though.

"If we can get to consensus, we're going to move," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters. "If we can't get to consensus, we're going to continue to work on creating consensus."

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