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| Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., right watches as Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., left, speaks to the media, with Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., after a Blue Dog Democrats meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, July 21, 2009. |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Conservative House Democrats signaled on Wednesday that Congress is far from fulfilling President Barack Obama's goal of overhauling health care, just hours before the president planned another televised appeal to lawmakers to get the job done.
"We are making progress; however, we have a long way to go," Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., chairman of the Blue Dog health care task force, said in a statement. He said they would continue to work with the administration and Democratic leaders toward legislation they can ultimately support.
Obama's ambitious timetable of votes in the House and Senate before Congress' August recess is slipping as moderate and conservative Democrats - the so-called Blue Dogs - demanded additional cost savings.
First-term lawmakers upset with proposed tax increases and objections from members of the rank-and-file opposed to allowing the government to sell health insurance in competition with private industry also slowed the president's top domestic priority.
After more than a week of tirelessly pressuring Congress to move, Obama may have to settle for a fallback strategy on overhauling health care. The best Democrats may be able to hope for this summer is action by the full House by the end of the month and some sort of agreement on a bipartisan plan in the Senate before lawmakers head home for vacation.
Not only are Republicans honing their opposition, but some Democrats in both chambers are voicing doubts about moving such complex and costly legislation too quickly.
"No one wants to tell the speaker (Nancy Pelosi) that she's moving too fast and they damn sure don't want to tell the president," Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., a key committee chairman, told a fellow lawmaker as the two walked into a closed-door meeting Tuesday. The remark was overheard by reporters.
Obama has scheduled a prime-time news conference Wednesday, expected to focus on health care. The issue is turning into a major test of his leadership. One Republican senator says if the party can stop Obama on health care, it will break him.
In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, the president insisted on action by lawmakers, even as he conceded some of the criticism was valid. Referring to objections from a group of conservative Democrats in the House, Obama said, "I think, rightly, a number of these so called Blue Dog Democrats - more conservative Democrats - were concerned that not enough had been done on reducing costs."
Obama said those issues can be addressed as the legislation keeps moving forward. Congress has already spent years studying and debating the problems in the health care system, he said.
Meanwhile, a conservative South Carolina Republican, Sen. Jim DeMint, refused Wednesday to back away from his earlier assertion that the health care overhaul will prove to be Obama's "Waterloo."
Appearing on NBC's "Today" show Wednesday, DeMint was asked if he stood by that statement. He replied, "It's not personal. But we've got to stop his policies. The policies are not matching up to the promises. They're loading trillions of dollars of debt on to the American people."
Given the struggle, the polls show slippage for Obama, although he remains popular.
Fifty percent of Americans approve of Obama's handling of health care, just slightly lower than his rating in April, according to The Associated Press-GfK poll released Tuesday. However, the number who disapprove jumped from 28 percent in April to 43 percent, with Obama losing support from independents.
With health care ranking as the top concern, 56 percent think Obama can implement a national health care plan in the next four years, but that's down from 63 percent before his January inauguration.
The AP-GfK Poll, conducted July 16-20 by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media, interviewed 1,006 adults nationwide. The survey had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Pelosi, D-Calif., vowed weeks ago that the House would vote by the end of July on legislation to meet two goals established by Obama. The president wants to extend health coverage to the tens of millions who now lack it, and at the same time restrain the growth in health care costs far into the future. The upfront costs, however, could reach $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years.
The president also has vowed that the legislation will not swell the deficit, although a senior administration official told reporters Tuesday that the pledge does not apply to an estimated $245 billion to increase fees for doctors serving Medicare patients over the next decade.
Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, said that was because the administration always assumed the money would be spent to avert a scheduled cut of 21 percent in doctor's fees.
At the White House, Obama and moderate and conservative Democrats verbally agreed on a council of experts to find savings in Medicare, coupled with a mechanism to force Congress to act on the recommendations. The cost curbs may help woo some of the conservatives.
In the Senate, a small, bipartisan group of lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee met behind closed doors, pursuing an elusive agreement. The negotiations, led by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., have taken on new urgency. But it's unclear whether they will produce a breakthrough - or peter out in frustration.
