Senate slowing down health care reform
By: Susan Ferrechio
Chief Congressional Correspondent
June 17, 2009
The Senate is putting the breaks on an effort to pass sweeping health care reform. As a result, negotiators say a bill may not be finished by the August recess as Democrats had planned.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the two top lawmakers trying to write a bipartisan bill, have been unable to agree on several major issues, including whether to include a government-run insurance and whether to make it mandatory for employers to provide health insurance.
Baucus is also trying to strip $600 billion from the bill, based on a Congressional Budget Office estimate that the legislation would cost $1.6 trillion over ten years.
"So things have slipped,” Grassley said in between closed-door negotiations on the bill. "Whether this will be done next Tuesday or a week from Tuesday or, you know, maybe after the 4th of July break, right now, it's out."
President Barack Obama told lawmakers he wants a bill on his desk by October. Congress is not in session the month of August, which leaves just a few working weeks lof summer, and all of September, to pass a bill.
Grassley said part of the problem is the need to have the proposal’s costs evaluated by the Congressional Budget Office, a process that takes several days, at least. No "mark-up" of a bill can happen until then.
Grassley said he did not believe negotiators would be able to get a final bill to the budget office in time for it to assess the cost by Tuesday, when when work on the bill was initially scheduled to begin.
Baucus said that bill language would be released on Thursday or Friday, but as of Wednesday, there was still no deal and he signaled work might not take place until after the July 4 recess.
The Senate on Wednesday took up a more liberal health care reform bill, authored by Sen. Edward Kennedy, which includes a significant public health option and is expected to get virtually no GOP support. Republicans on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which is considering the bill, slammed the proposal over its vagueness and cost, which the CBO estimated to be at least $1 trillion.
The two bills are to be merged before a final version is voted on in the Senate.
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who is managing the talks in place of an ailing Kennedy, on Wednesday would not guarantee that the Senate would vote on a bill by August.
