WASHINGTON — From the White House to Capitol Hill, Democrats on Tuesday confidently predicted Senate passage of President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul after the bill cleared its second 60-vote test and the time was set for a final tally.
Arriving on the Senate floor in the middle of the afternoon, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced an agreement to vote on final passage at 7 a.m. CST Thursday, Christmas Eve. It would mark the 25th consecutive day of Senate debate on health care.
“The finish line is in sight,” Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said at a news conference with other Senate leaders and cheering supporters. “We’re not the first to attempt such reforms, but we will be the first to succeed.”
At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs declared: “Health-care reform is not a matter of if. Healthcare reform is now a matter of when.”
Obama on Tuesday rejected the criticism that he has compromised too muchto secure health-care legislation, challenging his critics to identify any “gap” between what he campaigned on last year and what Congress is on the verge of passing.
“Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between the perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health-care bill,” Obama told The Washington Post about his legislative record this year. “Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill.”
Obama offered a vigorous defense of the legislation and the priorities he set out in shaping it, saying he is “not just grudgingly supporting the bill. I am very enthusiastic about what we have achieved.”
He said the Senate legislation accomplishes “95 percent” of what he called for during his 2008 presidential campaign and in his September speech to a joint session of Congress on the need for the health-care overhaul.
Obama said he “could have put off” the overhaul, adding that “there are some people who would say that wouldn’t be such a bad thing - the opponents of reform.”
But he said delaying on that issue, which has been tied to the country’s future fiscal and financial health, would have continued the “double-digit” rise in health-care costs and increase the burden on businesses paying for employee coverage.
“Given how difficult fighting the special interest has been on Capitol Hill, it’s clear that, if we hadn’t decided to make a bold step forward this year, we probably wouldn’t have had the political capital to get it done in the future,” he said. “Sooner or later we had to take that on, even though we knew it would be politically difficult.”
Senate Democrats remained behind their compromise bill over steadfastRepublican opposition. A motion to shut off debate and move to a vote on a package of changes by Reid passed 60-39. Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe didn’t vote. The bill had passed an earlier 60-vote test in the wee hours of Monday morning.
The final 60-vote hurdle, limiting debate on the bill itself, is expected to be cleared this afternoon, setting up the Christmas Eve-morning vote on the legislation, which at that point will need only a simple majority to pass.
After the vote on final passage, the Senate will vote to extend the government’s legal borrowing authority by another $290 billion, according to an agreement announced by Senate party leaders on the floor.The deal also gives the Republicans the opportunity to offer a series of amendments to long-term debt-extension legislation that must be passed by mid-February.
The Senate has been voting at odd hours since Monday around 1 a.m. because Republicans have insisted on using all the time allowed under Senate rules to delay the bill. Not to be thwarted, Reid has refused to postpone action until after the Christmas and New Year holidays. On Tuesday, they started voting at sunrise.
With fatigue and frustration rising, Reid appealed to his colleagues to set aside acrimony and reach for some holiday spirit.
“I would hope everybody will keep in mind that this is a time when we reflect on peace and good things,” he said. Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he, too, wanted to close the debate. After conferring with McConnell, Reid announced the timing of the final vote.
Unable to block the bill, Republicans argued that they had done all they could to shine a light of harsh scrutiny on the package and the many side deals Reid cut to win over wavering Democrats. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said the most effective strategy is to let senators face the wrath of their constituents back home.
“The very best thing that can happen to this bill is for us to go home and let the people of this country tell the congressmen and the senators what they think about the taxes, the Medicare cuts and the sweetheart deals,” Alexander said, “so when we come back in January, we can stop this train and take a different course. We still have time to go down a different road, rather than pursue a political kamikaze mission toward a historic mistake.”
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina denounced concessions won by conservative Nebraska Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson, whose support gave Democrats the 60th and final vote they need. Among other things, Nelson got an agreement that the federal government will pay to expand Medicaid services in Nebraska.
South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, a candidate for governor, said he and his counterparts in Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas and Washington state - all Republicans - are jointly taking a look at whether the special provisions for Nebraska and other states are constitutional.
“Whatever the legal status may be, and we hope to find out soon, these negotiations on their face appear to be a form of vote buying paid for by taxpayers,” McMaster said, adding he hopes citizens will challenge the legislation in court.
Reid has defended the deal making, asserting that senators got something they were looking for in the health bill and if they didn’t, it speaks poorly of them.
Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa also defended the concessions, saying, “The one that’s being talked about for Nebraska, it also benefits other states. It’s not just Nebraska.”
He also said he would vote for the package even if it didn’t contain concessions for Iowa. “The principle of this bill overrides everything,” Harkin told CBS’ Early Show.
Moderate Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who has also been criticized after securing a boost in Medicaid for her state, defended the concessions she got, saying they benefited low-income families and small businesses.
Also Tuesday, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., announced that the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services has agreedto his request to investigate whether drug companies are raising prices of brand-name prescription drugs used by Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries ahead of passage of the health-care bill. AARP says prescription-drug prices are on the rise, but the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America said in a statement that Nelson’s request “was spurred, in large part, on misleading statistics and sensationalized media reports.”
The Senate measure would still have to be reconciled with the health-care bill passed by the House in November before final legislation would go to Obama.
There are significant differences between the two bills, including stricter abortion language in the House bill, a new government-run insurance plan in the House bill that’s missing from the Senate version, and a tax on high-value insurance plans embraced by the Senate but strongly opposed by many House Democrats.
Senate moderates have served notice they won’t support a final deal if government-run insurance comes back. And Democratic abortion opponents in the House say a Senate compromise on the volatile issue is unacceptable.
The bills probably have more in common than differences. Each costs around $1 trillion over 10 years and installs new requirements for nearly all Americans to buy insurance, providing subsidies to help lower-income people do so. They’re paid forby a combination of tax and fee increases and cuts in projected Medicare spending.
Insurance company practices such as denying coverage to people with existing health problems would be banned. Uninsured or selfemployed Americans would have a new way to buy health insurance, via marketplaces called exchanges where private insurers would sell health plans required to meet certain minimum standards.
Though the overhaul has drawn the backing of some health-care groups, including the American Medical Association, opinion polls show public support still lags.
A CNN-Opinion Research Corp. poll taken while the Senate debated the measure showed a 6-point increase in support for the legislation, though a majority of respondents remained opposed. The survey of 1,160 U.S. adults Dec. 16-20 found 42 percent supporting the measure and 56 percent opposed. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Meanwhile, Obama said he won’t leave Washington for his Hawaii vacation until the Senate finishes work on the overhaul, even if that means staying in town for Christmas Eve.
“My attitude is that if they’re making these sacrifices to provide health care to all Americans then the least I can do is to be around and provide them any encouragement and last-minute help where necessary,” Obama said Tuesday.
Information for this article was contributed by Erica Werner, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Jim Davenport of The Associated Press; by Scott Wilson, Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane of The Washington Post; and by Nicole Gaouette, Kristin Jensen, James Rowley, Jonathan D. Salant, Ryan J. Donmoyer, Kate Andersen Brower, Lynn Thomasson, Alex Nussbaum and Henry Goldman of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/23/2009