Partisan or Not, a Tough Course on Health Care (229 hits)
WASHINGTON — The decision by Senate Democratic leaders last week to devote more time to winning Republican support for a health care overhaul has allowed President Obama to keep alive the possibility of bipartisanship on one of the most contentious issues on his agenda. But Mr. Obama is under growing pressure to choose between wooing a small band of Republicans or struggling to rally his party to use its big majorities in Congress to get the job done.
The bipartisanship exhibited in the passage of two other ambitious domestic programs that offer one historical backdrop for this debate — Social Security in 1935 and Medicare and Medicaid 30 years later — seems increasingly improbable in today’s Washington.
To some extent, achieving any kind of bipartisan accord seems almost a luxury given the difficulties Mr. Obama has had in corralling his own party behind a health care plan. After a sharp clash on Friday between different camps of Democrats on the health care bill, House staff members worked into the weekend in an effort to reach a compromise and bring a bill to the floor before recessing for the summer.
Even if he goes the bipartisan route and succeeds, the end result could be comparatively modest: Perhaps fewer than 10 Senate Republicans, and perhaps not even that many in the House, party officials said. Social Security, by contrast, passed in 1935 with the support of 16 of the 25 Republican senators and 81 of the 102 Republican representatives.
“If Republicans don’t make a genuine effort to negotiate to achieve health care reform, I certainly don’t think there’s a price to pay for doing it without them,” said Joel Benenson, the president’s pollster. Should Mr. Obama abandon efforts to reach out to Republicans, he risks damaging his appeal among independent voters, who have a history of being put off by overt partisanship...
