Nelson Challenges Health Bill’s Christmas Deadline

Laura Litvan and Kristin Jensen
Bloomberg.com
Dec 18, 2009

Dec. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson threw a Christmas deadline for passage of health-care legislation into further doubt, rejecting a compromise on abortion and saying he doesn’t see how fellow Democrats can resolve all his concerns.

“I can’t tell you that they couldn’t come up with something that would be satisfactory on abortion between now and then and solve all the other issues that I’ve raised to them, but I don’t see how,” Nelson said in an interview yesterday with KLIN radio in Nebraska’s capital of Lincoln.

Nelson, who says the bill doesn’t do enough to prevent U.S. subsidies from being used to fund abortions, rebuffed new language offered by Democrats. Nelson told reporters he’s also worried about proposed cuts to the Medicare program for the elderly and the cost burden for his home state.

President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid need Nelson’s support because they have no backing from Republicans, who today vowed to use every procedural delay at their disposal to try to block the bill’s passage next week.

Reid and Obama have been trying to persuade Nelson to join Democrats in supporting their top domestic priority. Nelson spent an hour and 20 minutes meeting with Reid today in the majority leader’s office, emerging to tell reporters he couldn’t predict the timing of any potential deal.

Closing ‘the Gap’

“Hopefully, we’re making progress,” Nelson said. “There’s always a lot of room which you have to have between the bid and the ask, and we’re trying to close the gap.”

In his comments yesterday on KLIN, Nelson said he would join with Republicans to block action unless more revisions are made.

“I’m less interested in a deadline than I am in getting it right or trying to go back to the drawing board in some areas,” he said.

Obama and Reid, a Nevada Democrat, have also been courting Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, the only Republican to vote for a health bill on the committee level.

So far Snowe, who spoke with Obama by telephone and in person yesterday, is unwilling to help the Democrats meet their Christmas deadline.

Rushing to passage “doesn’t make sense” for legislation that wouldn’t take effect in four years, she said. Obama told her “he would prefer to move the process forward,” Snowe told reporters. “I was advocating using part of January to focus on issues that need attention.”

She said her chief concerns included a potential increase in Medicare payroll taxes and the impact on small businesses.

Insurance Mandate

The 10-year, $848 billion Senate health plan is designed to cover 31 million uninsured Americans and curb medical costs. Like a measure passed Nov. 7 by the U.S. House, it would require Americans to get health coverage, offering expanded aid for the poor and creating online insurance-purchasing exchanges to help the uninsured buy policies.

Republicans say the bill might crowd out private insurers, raise taxes and widen the federal budget deficit. Their party’s leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, made it clear that Republicans will do all they can to ensure that Reid misses his self-imposed deadline.

“We’re not going to expedite consideration of the health- care bill,” McConnell said, refusing to “telegraph procedural moves that may be available to us.”

Not ‘Outrageous’

Asked if Republicans planned to force the Senate to exhaust time reading the legislation, Arizona Senator John McCain told reporters, “I don’t think it would be outrageous to ask for a bill to be read that we haven’t seen that affects one-seventh of our gross national product.”

Reid is drafting changes to the bill as he attempts to satisfy concerns of 60 senators and enable a pre-Christmas vote. McConnell accused Democrats of trying to rush through a “mysterious bill that no one has seen.”

New polls show the Republican argument may be gaining traction. In a Dec. 11-14 Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll of 1,008 adults, 44 percent said it would be better not to pass Obama’s plan and keep the current system; 41 percent said it would be better to pass the plan. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Still, Reid has almost all the votes he needs, and he asked Pennsylvania Senator Robert Casey to craft compromise language on abortion to help win Nelson over.

Casey’s Proposal

Casey, who also opposes abortion, said his proposal included a $1,000 boost in an existing $10,000 tax credit for adoption, and $250 million over 10 years for programs designed to prevent unwanted pregnancies and to aid victims of domestic violence. Casey said he will “keep trying” to get a compromise Nelson can support.

“These are valuable improvements that will make a positive difference and promote life,” Nelson said in a statement. “But as it is, without modifications, the language concerning abortion is not sufficient.”

While the focus has been on Nelson, Democrats including Virginia Senator Mark Warner said they can’t commit to supporting the bill until they’ve seen the language and a Congressional Budget Office cost estimate.

Nelson told reporters that he understands why Reid is pushing senators to act, saying the pressure moves the process along. Still, he said, “I intend to be home Christmas.”