2010-01-07
The
Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives has begun a series of
meetings and negotiating sessions aimed at striking a deal with the Senate on a
health-care overhaul bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House Democratic
leaders met with President Barack Obama at the White House to discuss ways to
reconcile the House's health-care overhaul with a version passed by the Senate. They decided to bypass a formal House and Senate conference to meld their
health-care bills, instead conducting informal negotiations to sidestep
possible Republican delays of the process.
To hold a formal conference, conferees
- members of the House and Senate - must be appointed by both bodies with
resolutions passed by the Senate and the House. Democratic leadership aides
said getting those resolutions passed could delay and even derail Democratic
efforts because Republicans would be allowed to offer amendments and hold
lengthy debates on the resolutions to appoint conferees.
Instead, White House, House and Senate
Democratic leaders and their key committee chairmen will informally meet to
find compromise between the two health-care bills.
In addition, the White House,
criticized by many Democrats for months for having too much of a hands-off
approach to health-care, has promised that the president and his aides will
take a more prominent role in the final health-care talks.
After the initial White House meeting, House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi reported that congressional Democrats were close to
agreement on merging their health-care bills, but still faced challenges in
blending the two approaches. House leaders have a list of about two-dozen
issues to be resolved, including the very political issues of abortion funding,
new taxes to pay for reform, a government-run public option, and subsidy levels.
The
process seems likely to mimic the lengthy back-and-forth that House Democratic
leaders went through in their own chamber to line up at least 218 votes, a
House majority, from members of their own caucus. Those negotiations, which led
to passage of the House bill (HR 3962) by 220-215 on November 7, 2009, required a
number of compromises with conservative Democrats and the sacrifice of a few
dearly-held liberal goals for the legislation.
It
is already clear, for example, that the House is prepared, conditionally, to
drop a government-run public insurance plan that was a key component of its
version of the bill (HR 3962). During a meeting of House
leaders and committee chairmen involved in drafting a compromise, Speaker
Pelosi did not insist on a public plan in the insurance options to be made
available to individuals and some small businesses on new exchanges, or
marketplaces, to be created by the legislation.
However, House Democrats will not give up on the public option until
they are satisfied that other provisions would suffice to drive down costs and
more tightly regulate the industry.
Another
major issue to be resolved in negotiations is how to pay for reform. The House bill relies primarily on an income
surtax on wealthy individuals to raise revenue, while the Senate would impose a
number of new fees on various sectors of the health-care industry and an excise
tax on high-cost health insurance plans offered by employers.
House
Democrats appear to be open to one revenue-raising proposal in the Senate’s
version of the bill (HR 3590) - a boost in the Medicare
payroll tax for high-income wage earners. The Senate bill would boost the 1.45
percent Medicare payroll tax paid by all wage earners to 2.35 percent for
individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and joint filers making more than
$250,000. While House Democrats still consider a 5.4 percent income surtax on
individuals with incomes above $500,000 to be their preferred approach, talks
in coming days could produce a deal.
Democratic leaders are hoping that negotiators can reach a deal that can be passed by both
chambers and sent to Obama by the first week in February, when the President
may deliver his State of the Union address to Congress.
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