House Leaders Struggle with Health Care
Congressional leaders struggled without success Friday to ease concerns of moderate to conservative Democrats who have held up progress on health care legislation, a top domestic priority for President Barack Obama. With talks deadlocked, a key committee chairman suggested an end run around the rebels.
Rep. Mike Ross, a Democrat, said attempts by so-called Blue Dog conservative Democrats to win changes had ended in stalemate.
"It pretty much fell apart this afternoon," he said.
The group has enough votes on the Energy and Commerce Committee to prevent the bill's passage there, and the chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat, raised the possibility of simply bypassing the panel and taking the legislation directly to the House floor.
"We're going to have to look at perhaps bypassing the committee because we've got to get moving on this legislation," he said. "I hope we don't come to that conclusion."
He said that while negotiations with Democratic critics are continuing, "we're not going to let them empower the Republicans to control the committee." No House Republican has yet expressed support for the health bill that the White House is seeking.
Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the second-ranking Democrat in the House, said Friday that lawmakers may not be able to vote on a health care bill next week but might remain in Washington in August to complete President Barack Obama's top domestic priority. Hoyer suggested House leadership might keep lawmakers in Washington past their scheduled break, which is slated to begin Aug. 1
House Democrats say they've settled at least one major issue after devising a plan to cut the growth of Medicare. Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed the agreement as a "giant step forward."
Under the agreement, the Institute of Medicine would complete a study by September 2011 recommending changes in the current fee structure. The administration would have 45 days to submit the report to Congress, and it would go into effect unless Congress blocked it by the end of February 2012.
Separately, lawmakers agreed to call for a second study by the Institute of Medicine to investigate regional differences in payments to Medicare providers, to be implemented in 2014. Officials said the two steps combined were designed to control the steady increase in Medicare costs, although they provided no immediate estimates of anticipated savings.
At the White House, Obama met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, both Democrats, in an attempt to speed completion of a bipartisan deal that has been under discussion for weeks. Reid said Thursday that the panel will push to complete a bill before the Senate breaks Aug. 7. Baucus has been negotiating with the panel's Republicans in hopes of producing a bipartisan bill.
The White House says President Barack Obama will continue to work on health care in August, even if Congress goes on vacation. "Nobody in planning meetings decided we should just take August off," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
The Obama administration and Democratic leaders are trying to fight the impression that the effort that's been months in the making is now fizzling on Capitol Hill.