Friday, Nov. 06, 2009

House Democrats slog through final compromises on health care

WASHINGTON -- With a historic floor vote looming on their health care bill, House Democratic leaders worked into the night Friday to round up rank-and-file Democrats who still had not committed to support the legislation despite weeks of cajoling and deal-making.

Senior Democrats maintained they would have the 218 votes to needed for passage when the House votes, perhaps as soon as Saturday evening.

"You don't go to the floor unless you're there - and we're there," said Rep. John Larson of Connecticut, the No. 4 Democrat in the House.

But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Friday that he has told lawmakers to be prepared to come in on Sunday or even next week. "There are many people who are still looking to get a comfort level," a tired-sounding Hoyer said.

President Barack Obama, who has made health care legislation the centerpiece of his domestic agenda, planned to visit the Capitol on Saturday morning to rally House Democrats.

He pushed back the visit for a day because of the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, according to the White House.

With 258 seats - counting newly elected New York Rep. Bill Owens, who was sworn in Friday - Democrats can afford to lose 40 members and still pass the health care bill.

No Republicans are expected to vote for the more than $1 trillion measure, which would expand coverage to 96 percent of Americans over the next decade and begin reshaping the nation's health care system.

"I have never seen greater evidence that Washington, D.C., is out of touch with the American people than the fact that Democrats are going to continue in their headlong rush to pass a government takeover of health care in the wake of rising unemployment in this nation," said Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, the No. 3 Republican in the House, citing new figures that showed national unemployment had risen to 10.2 percent in October.

Hoyer expressed concern that GOP lawmakers might attempt to disrupt the voting by making repeated motions to adjourn, as they have in the past.

Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Friday that party leaders had not decided what they would do during the vote.

Such last-minute uncertainty is not unusual on major legislation. Six years ago, Republicans held open the vote to create a new Medicare prescription drug benefit for hours as they tried to round up votes.

And one veteran lawmaker predicted that when the voting actually starts, more lawmakers will come over to the majority.

"I don't believe all those people who say no," said 19-term Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark, D-Calif. "When they look up at the board, do they really want to vote against providing coverage to millions of people?"

But Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said party leaders are reluctant to go to a floor vote without a guaranteed result.

"You don't want to roll the dice on this," he said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi cleared one roadblock on her side of the aisle by persuading Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., to withdraw his demand for a vote on a controversial amendment that would create a single-payer system in which the government would cover all Americans, a long-held goal of the left.

"I'm disappointed," said Weiner, who made the concession after sitting down with Pelosi and House Energy and Commerce chairman Henry Waxman late Thursday and reviewing a list of centrist Democrats uncomfortable about the vote. "But the most important thing that we have to do here is move the ball forward and get a bill passed."

On another front, senior Democrats tried to build support for a compromise to defuse a long-simmering debate over how to restrict federal funding for abortion.

The proposal by Indiana Rep. Brad Ellsworth, a socially conservative Democrat, strengthens a provision in the health care bill that prohibits insurance companies from using federal funds to cover abortions.

Ellsworth's compromise also would make the limits on federal funding for abortion more permanent than current law.

The measure has won the grudging support of many abortion rights supporters in Congress. But Ellsworth and others were still working to rally conservative Democrats behind the compromise, which anti-abortion groups have slammed.

Democratic leaders are also working to allay concerns about how the bill limits undocumented immigrants' access to the health care system.

Some conservatives are concerned that there are insufficient identification requirements to prevent undocumented immigrants from getting public-funded health benefits. On the other side of the issue, several Latino lawmakers are angry about a late addition to the bill that would effectively prevent undocumented immigrants from using their own money to buy health insurance.

(Janet Hook and Richard Simon of Tribune Washington Bureau contributed to this report.)