Obama Delays Trip as Health-Care Faces New Hurdle (Update2)
March 12, 2010, 11:47 AM EST(Adds comments from lawmakers starting in 11th paragraph.)
By Laura Litvan and Kristin Jensen
March 12 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is delaying his trip to Asia to work on health-care legislation as Republicans claimed a parliamentary victory in their effort to derail the measure.
The president, who is pushing lawmakers to act before they leave March 26 for a two-week recess, will now depart March 21 for Indonesia and Australia and won’t be bringing his family, spokesman Robert Gibbs said. He plans to return March 26.
Republicans said they received word from the Senate parliamentarian that Obama must sign a Senate health-care bill into law before the House and Senate can approve changes to it under a process called reconciliation. That’s an issue for House Democrats who oppose provisions in the original Senate bill.
“This would be another headwind for Democrats in the House,” said John Sullivan, a health-care analyst at Boston- based Leerink Swann & Co. “Their biggest fear has been that they vote for the Senate version and they never get the relief they’re looking for.”
The Senate parliamentarian told Republicans that a reconciliation bill has to “make changes in law,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Won’t Disrupt Plans
West Virginia Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller said the parliamentarian’s ruling wouldn’t disrupt plans for the House to pass the reconciliation legislation before the Senate acts on it. “It’s always been my understanding that’s what they were going to do,” he told reporters.
Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, declined to comment.
Reconciliation, which requires a simple majority vote in the Senate, is at issue because Democrats are trying to find a way to complete their work on health care now that they control only 59 of the 100 seats in the chamber. Senate Democrats passed their original bill in December with 60 votes, the number generally required to push through major legislation.
Obama is asking the House to pass the Senate bill as well as another measure to make changes to it under reconciliation, a process designed for budget items. The Senate would then also approve the changes under reconciliation.
The problem is that House Democrats object to some parts of the 10-year, $875 billion Senate bill, so they are seeking assurance that the package of changes will also become law. They wanted Obama to hold off signing the Senate bill until the reconciliation measure passed both chambers.
‘Untrustworthy Body’
“At the end of the day, members of the House are being asked to trust an untrustworthy body,” said Representative Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat. The Senate hasn’t passed many of the bills the House sent over in the last year and House members can’t be sure that the Senate can act now, he said.
Still, Weiner said he sensed momentum toward passage. The fact that lawmakers are increasingly talking about process instead of policy differences is a good sign, he said.
The No. 2 House Democrat, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, today predicted the House would pass both the Senate bill and the reconciliation package by the time lawmakers leave for a two- week recess on March 26.
“That’s our objective, and I think we will,” Hoyer said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend.
Language Agreements
The news from Republicans, who unanimously oppose the legislation, came on the same day that House and Senate leaders said they had reached agreement on most of the language in the new reconciliation bill. The leaders presented the outlines of the plan to House Democrats yesterday.
“The decisions are made, the choice has to be made” by lawmakers, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters.
Democrats are calling for the biggest changes to the medical system since the Medicare health program for the elderly was created in 1965. Their plan would require Americans to get insurance, covering tens of millions more people, and offer new purchasing exchanges and government aid to help.
Pelosi said lawmakers are awaiting a cost analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. The White House estimated that a proposal Obama put forth last month, the basis for the reconciliation bill, would cost $950 billion over 10 years.
Pelosi said the legislation will eliminate 80 percent of an excise tax on high-priced insurance plans in the Senate measure and replace the lost revenue mostly with a Medicare tax on unearned income. It will increase Medicare prescription-drug benefits to eliminate a gap in coverage for seniors, she said.
Student Loans
The legislation will include a revamp of the college student loan program, said California Representative George Miller, chairman of the House education committee. The House- passed measure would allow the government to provide new college loans directly while eliminating federal guarantees and subsidies to private lenders such as Sallie Mae.
Weiner said lawmakers are still waiting to hear about the level of subsidies to help low-income Americans purchase insurance and how much extra help to give states such as New York that offer more generous Medicaid benefits.
The House Budget Committee will take up the reconciliation measure on March 15, said a congressional aide familiar with the schedule.
--With assistance from James Rowley, Nicole Gaouette, Edwin Chen and Ryan Donmoyer in Washington and Pat Wechsler and Alex Nussbaum in New York. Editors: Robin Meszoly, Bob Drummond.
To contact the reporters on this story: Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net; Kristin Jensen in Washington at kjensen@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jim Kirk at jkirk12@bloomberg.net
