Health plans on collision course

By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN & PATRICK O'CONNOR | 12/20/09 8:01 PM EST

Despite a last-minute weekend deal that put the Senate on the brink of passing health care reform this week, liberal and moderate Democrats remain on a collision course over the bill, as both sides dug in Sunday for the next phase of negotiations.

President Barack Obama’s liberal base and powerful union leaders once hoped the expected House-Senate conference would partly undo a year of retreats and compromises, with Obama weighing in to nudge the moderate Senate bill to the left.

But the titanic struggle to lock in Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) as the 60th senator for the first key test vote early Monday morning has changed all that. The need to hold Nelson and other moderates in line means major changes on the public option, abortion, taxes, Medicare and Medicaid are unlikely — and that the Senate’s vision of health reform is likely to prevail over the House’s in the final talks.

“It is very clear that the bill — the final bill — to pass in the United States Senate is going to have to be very close to the bill that has been negotiated here,” Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Otherwise, you will not get 60 votes in the United States Senate.”

Nelson, who received assurances of a “limited conference” to secure his vote for the Senate bill, has already laid down at least two deal breakers in the House bill that he can’t support: the inclusion of a government insurance plan and an income tax increase on wealthy individuals.

“That would break it,” Nelson said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

House Democrats acknowledge that they will be limited in how far they can tweak the Senate compromise. But House leadership also knows that its rank and file need to force some changes, however small, before they will accept the final package — as a face-saving measure to be able to swallow late changes to the bill in the Senate, most notably the decision to eliminate a public option.

But on the left, the sentiments of a liberal base that revolted over concessions to moderates were channeled Sunday by Howard Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, who last week repeatedly called on Democrats to scrap the bill.

“This can’t be the final version of the bill,” Dean said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It simply sets us on a track in this country which is expensive and where we’re going to have lots more political fights.”

In a slight shift, however, Dean tempered his words, saying the bill is better than it was earlier in the week.

“I would certainly not vote for this bill if this were the final product,” Dean said. “I would let this thing go to conference committee, and let’s see if we can fix it some more.”

 

 

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