A “salty” comment made in the company of drunken staff members at a wedding reception on New Year’s Eve was all the Democratic “forces that be” needed to push him out of the House of Representatives and prevent him from possibly casting the vote that would kill health care reform, says outgoing New York Rep. Eric Massa.

Massa, while acknowledging he made an “inappropriate” remark, defended himself Sunday against the firestorm of criticism he’s endured since it was revealed last week that he was the subject of a House ethics probe. Speaking on his local radio show on WKPQ-FM, he accused House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of lying and the Democratic Party of pushing him out of Congress over sexual harassment allegations in order to pass health care reform.

Massa, who supports a robust government health insurance plan, was one of 39 House Democrats who voted against the health care bill last year.

Massa said the incident that got him in trouble occurred at a staff member’s wedding reception on New Year’s Eve.

“I was with my wife. And in fact we had a great time. She got the stomach flu,” he said.

Massa said he had just gotten up to sing Auld Lang Syne and had finished dancing with the bride and bridesmaid — in full view of cameras — when he sat back down at a table with male staff members.

That’s when he made the “inappropriate” remark.

“One of them looked at me and, as they would do after, I don’t know, 15 gin and tonics, and goodness only knows how many bottles of champagne, a staff member made an intonation to me that maybe I should be chasing after the bridesmaid, and his points were clear and his words were far more colorful than that.

“And I grabbed the staff member sitting next to me and said, ‘Well, what I really ought to be doing is fracking you,’” he said.

“And then [I] tousled the guy’s hair and left, went to my room, because I knew the party was getting to a point where it wasn’t right for me to be there. Now was that inappropriate of me? Absolutely. Am I guilty? Yes.”

But Massa said the staff member “never said to me that he felt uncomfortable” and “never went to anybody.”

Rather, he said “somebody went to another staff member who was uncomfortable for him. It was a third-party political correctness statement.”

Massa, 50, announced last Wednesday that a recurrence of cancer made him decide not to seek re-election in the fall. But two days later, following persistent reports about an Ethics Committee inquiry into inappropriate remarks made to a male staffer, he announced he would resign. The resignation is expected to become official on Monday.

On Sunday, the first-term congressman claimed that the “forces that be” orchestrated a character assassination against him to push him out for the sake of the health care bill.

“Mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill and this administration and this House leadership have said, quote-unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill, and now they’ve gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots,” Massa said.

“The future of the Democratic Party rests on passing this health care bill. They can get anyone to say anything about me concerning anything at all and in fact they did.”

Massa said he didn’t know about the substance of the harassment complaint until after he announced he would not seek re-election — he said he caught wind of an ethics inquiry after the wedding, but assumed it was about a separate matter.

And he said the accounting provided by Hoyer and his staff is a fabrication.

Hoyer’s office claims the majority leader’s staff was notified the week of Feb. 8 about the allegations, that Hoyer was “immediately informed” and that he told his staff that Massa should refer the matter to the Ethics Committee within 48 hours, or he would do so himself. According to Hoyer’s office, Hoyer learned “within 48 hours” from the ethics committee staff and Massa’s staff that the Ethics Committee had been contacted.

“Steny Hoyer has never said a single word to me at all, not ever, not once,” Massa said on Sunday.

“Not a word. This is a lie. It’s a blatant false statement. And that’s what triggered me to understand what in fact is going on.”

Hoyer, though, did not claim he spoke directly to Massa.

“Mr. Hoyer was asked if he knew of the allegations before they were made public, and he answered yes,” Hoyer spokeswoman Katie Grant said Monday when asked about Massa’s radio show. “We then released a statement clarifying his knowledge of the situation.”

Tags: ethics committee, health care bill, health care reform, House of Representatives, Rep. Eric Massa, sexual harassment allegations

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s furious, final push to get a health care bill passed threatens to shove aside the message he promised would top his list this year: creating jobs.

Even as the White House juggles several enormous issues at once, the public takes its cues about the president’s chief concern from how he spends his time, energy and capital. As Obama himself put it on Wednesday, from now until Congress takes a final vote on a health care overhaul, “I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform.”

That kind of now-or-never campaign means America can expect a debate consumed by health care, again, for weeks.

The White House is trying mightily to focus it on real people and the human cost of inaction. But there will be no escaping the same slog that turned off so many people in 2009 — congressional process, arm-twisting and doomsday rhetoric.

So what unfolds over the next few weeks will affect millions of Americans and alter the course of Obama’s presidency. He has a shrinking window in which to find enough votes within his party to pass health care legislation so he can free himself to spend more bully pulpit time on the single issue that has stoked the public ire since he became president — disappearing jobs.

Polling shows the economy remains a bigger personal worry to people than the cost, access and coverage problems endemic to the health care system.

There is a huge economic element to health care as people struggle to pay premiums or keep their insurance. Yet to many, the astounding loss of jobs is a singular issue that demands constant, bold attention.

It is just this competition — the economy versus health care — that helped define Obama’s grueling first year in office and prompted howls within his own party for a recalibrated jobs-first agenda.

Obama responded with a State of the Union speech on Jan. 27 that was remarkably focused on the economy, dwarfing all other issues. “Creating jobs has to be our number one priority in 2010,” Obama emphasized the next day at a stop in Tampa, Florida.

Yet it was always the reality that Obama would consolidate his attention on health care again, at least for one last blitz. Beyond all the policy implications, Obama has spent a year on it and never intended to let that effort go to waste.

The White House’s political calculation is that the next few weeks are their last chance to push through an overhaul of health coverage. But aides also know it cannot drag on, as every day focused on process overshadows their message.

There is no expectation within the West Wing that voters’ moods will change until they see their lives improving. Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said the plan is to keep plugging away on an agenda to shore up the economy for the long haul.

“We’re going to still be out there on jobs,” Axelrod said, dismissing any worry that the economy-first message will be obscured. “We’re going to be focused on health care for the next few weeks, but we’re still going to be doing jobs.”

To get votes, Obama is lobbying lawmakers, many of whom are teetering in this election year. He’s calling on his 2008 campaign supporters to push Congress for a vote. He’s staging health care events in Philadelphia and St. Louis this coming week.

“They are looking at the election in November, and they need to have one big victory that they can claim,” said Michael Lind, policy director of the economic growth program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. “This is not the victory they would have chosen, because even if it does help the economy, it won’t help most people for years to come. The problem is, there just doesn’t seem to be the ability to do anything significant about jobs this year.”

The House and Senate have passed versions of a $35 billion bill that offers a tax break to companies that hire workers and extends federal highway programs, but even supporters doubt it will create many jobs. By comparison, the economic stimulus bill enacted last year — and not nearly spent out yet — was an $862 billion measure.

Lawmakers plan more steps this year. But there is less political will to keep spending on big jolts to the economy.

Obama has always argued that overhauling health care is not just about health, but also an economic imperative for families who will suffer “if we let this opportunity pass for another year or another decade or another generation” — a message he conveyed Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Part of Obama’s final argument to Democratic lawmakers is that getting health care done will give them momentum on other issues. It’s possible that the opposite is true, and a defeat now could undermine him on other fronts.

Maryland’s Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley said Obama understands that the rising costs of health care are hurting U.S. economic interests long term. Still, he urged Obama to finish up this priority and pivot back to a heavier jobs message.

“If we wrap this up, if we get this passed, it will become clear that health care was always about jobs,” he said.

Tags: final push, health care bill, malaise, Obama health care, Obama ignores jobs for health care, state of the union

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday President Obama will soon propose a health care bill that will be “much smaller” than the House bill but “big enough” to put the country on a “path” toward health care reform.

A senior administration official told Fox Obama’s proposal will be introduced Wednesday.

“In a matter of days, we will have a proposal,” Pelosi said, pointing to Obama’s forthcoming bill. “It will be a much smaller proposal than we had in the House bill, because that’s where we can gain consensus. But it will be big enough to put us on a path of affordable, quality health care for all Americans that holds insurance companies accountable.”

Melody Barnes, a top Obama domestic policy adviser, did not dispute Pelosi’s characterization of the new plan as smaller in scope – and quite possibly in cost – than either the House or Senate health care bills.

“It’s going to be matter of drawing on these different ideas and coming up with the right proposal,” Barnes said in an exclusive interview with Fox. “That’s what my colleagues are working on. That’s what they’re talking with Congress about. We’ll see what it looks like when the proposal is sent forward.”

Asked how White House staff is putting the new proposal together, Barnes said they are “borrowing” from conversations at Thursday’s health care summit.

“We’re going to be borrowing from those conversations…to come up with a bill that we hope can receive bipartisan support,” Barnes said.

When asked if White House staff, as Press Secretary Robert Gibbs indicated Friday, would work on GOP ideas for health reform over the weekend, Barnes identified two: tort reform and allowing insurers to sell policies across state lines.

“They (the summit participants) talked about medical malpractice reform and found possible areas of common ground there and so that’s something they (White House staff) will be looking at,” Barnes said. “They (summit participants) talked about purchasing insurance across state lines doing that, though, in a way to make sure people are treated fairly. So, I think we’ll look towards those issues and we will be drawing upon that. The conversation that took place at Blair House was important to us, because we wanted to hear what the leadership in Congress had to say.”

Pelosi’s remarks came during an event to highlight stimulus spending in Broomfield, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. When asked how Democrats could push health care through this year, Pelosi said the following:

“Freeze the design on the bill. See what the Senate can do; it’s essential for us to know what the Senate can do,” Pelosi said. “And then we will take up the bill on the House side.”

As for the results of Thursday’s health care summit, Pelosi said:

“People said it’s theater. Theater is about 2 and half 3 hours. Seven hours is about a commitment a dedicated commitment to get a job done. I heard a few good suggestions that we may be able to work into a bill. The American people can’t wait any longer. Now we’ll see what we can incorporate into the bill.”

White House and Democratic sources hasten to add late today that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not mean to suggest the new plan would constitute a retreat from comprehensive health care reform.

Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami said the speaker was trying to say the new Obama health care proposal would take its policy cues from the Senate health bill and the ideas Obama posted online a week ago.

Elshami did not deny Pelosi’s comments about a “much smaller” bill could fairly be interpreted as suggesting a step back from the Senate bill. Instead, Pelosi has come to regard the Senate bill itself as “much smaller” than the House bill, Elshami said.

White House officials also said Obama’s not dramatically scaling back his proposal. No one was prepared to discuss a price tag, but it appears the ballpark 10-year figure of $1 trillion remains.

The revisions, it appears, will focus on adding GOP ideas on tort reform and selling insurance across state lines. White House Domestic Policy Adviser Melody Barnes spoke extensively to Fox today about White House staff dealing with these two issues over the weekend (see post below).

Democrats described inclusion of medical malpractice and selling insurance across state lines as a last-ditch effort to win Republican support. Already, White House officials and Democrats have begun to argue that bipartisanship can be defined as legislation including Republican ideas, even if Republicans unanimously vote against it.

“How Republicans vote on their ideas is up to them,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday. “Bipartisanship can’t simply be none of your ideas and all of our ideas. That’s not bipartisanship.”

Tags: Blair House, congress, forthcoming bill, health care bill, health care reform, house speaker nancy pelosi, medical malpractice, President Obama, quality health care, senate, White House