The Obama administration is warning Democrats and the media that healthcare reform has reached a do-or-die stage and is in danger of imploding unless a deal is struck soon.
Vice President Joe Biden sounded the alarm on today's Morning Joe program: "If health care does not pass in this Congress -- and every day gets closer to the election as opposed to having more breathing room to actually have discussions and real open fights here – it's gonna be kicked back for a generation," he said.
Political analysts have seen little sign in recent days that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., whose Hail Mary insistence on a public option has altogether collapsed, has a workable plan to achieve a compromise before year's end. And the coming New Year will drastically escalate Democrats' fears that healthcare reform, which is increasingly unpopular in most opinion polls, could be a political millstone come November.
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The ineluctable realities of the electoral calendar have apparently led the administration to conclude that its best chance to get a reform bill through Congress is to light a fire of urgency on Capitol Hill. This is the "do or die" message President Obama that is expected to deliver at a special meeting of all Senate Democrats at the White House this afternoon.
According to Mike Allen's Politico Playbook: "Look for [Obama] to make the case that this is the last chance for healthcare reform."
The White House is privately warning that if President Obama and congressional Democrats, who enjoy a supermajority and 60 votes in the Senate, can't pass healthcare reform soon, future presidents may view the issue as a political third rail, avoiding reform altogether.
"If President Obama doesn't pass health reform," said White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, "it's hard to imagine another president ever taking on this herculean task. For those whose life's work is reforming health care, this may be the last train leaving the station."
Most observers still believe Democrats will still achieve a compromise, finally embarking on the legislative march toward a successful vote in the Senate. But with Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman's declaration that he will not support either a public option or a massive expansion of Medicare coverage, the White House for the first time sees a scenario where Democrats become so ensnared in squabbles over various aspects of the incredibly complex, 2,100-page bill that reform implodes altogether.
Yesterday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs sidestepped a question about a report that the White House had urged Reid to cut a deal acceptable to Lieberman, in order to move reform forward.
Asked to confirm the report, Gibbs would only say with a canny smile: "The president is anxious to see progress, and we'll continue to work with Democrats and Republicans and independents and everyone in between to make that progress.
Lieberman's support is vital because he represents the 60th vote that would be needed to cut off a Republican-led filibuster. The administration's willingness to jettison the expansion of Medicare coverage has been generally viewed as a signal that any bill passed by the Senate is not likely to include any form of the controversial public option, which conservatives fear would be a step toward single-payer, government run healthcare.
Dr. Robert E. Moffit, the director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Health Policy studies, left little doubt Tuesday that even without the public option, conservatives will continue to oppose the reforms generally known as "ObamaCare."
"If the public option goes, it will have only a marginal influence on the substance of the bill," Moffit tells Newsmax. "The whole bill is a public option: A massive transfer of power and control over health benefits and financing to Washington."
The Obama administration and Democratic leaders know they desperately need to put the contentious battle over healthcare behind them as soon as possible, in order to focus the national dialog on job creation and deficit control – issues they concede they must address if they hope to minimize their political losses in the midterm elections.
There is no assurance, however, that House liberals will accept the bill that emerges from the Senate's legislative meat grinder.
"If the bill does pass the Senate," the Wall Street Journal's Gerald F. Seib wrote Tuesday, "the question will be whether a much broader group of Democrats in the House will decide to swallow hard and accept a bill with parts they don't love, and may even hate."
On Monday, Rep. Raul Grijalva, the influential co-chairman of the House Progressive Caucus, told ABC News that the House and Senate versions of the bill "are irreconcilable."
"And if we get something from the Senate that basically replicates what we have now in the [health care] system," Grijalva said, "I think it’s going to have a difficult time, if not an impossible time, getting through the House."
That's not the only aspect of the two bills that may be reconcilable, either. The compromise that finally got House Speaker Nancy Pelosi the five-vote margin she needed to pass the bill was an amendment that specifically forbad the use of any public moneys to pay for abortion. The Senate, however, voted against a ban on abortions in those plans that are purchased with government subsidies.
The bottom line to the alarmist rhetoric now coming from the administration: Unless Democrats put their differences behind them and work out a deal with Sen. Lieberman, healthcare reform is no longer the sure bet that Reid, Pelosi, and the president have portrayed it to be all along.
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