In an amazing slap in the face to the majority of Americans that oppose President Obama’s health care reform, house democrats, being pushed by President Obama and speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi, seem poised to pass one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation to come along in more than eighty years.

With President Barack Obama’s sweeping healthcare overhaul headed for a final House vote this week, House Democratic Whip James Clyburn said Democrats were short for now of the 216 votes needed for approval but he was confident they could find them.

“We don’t have them as of this morning, but we’ve been working this thing all weekend, we’ll be working it going into the week, I’m also very confident that we’ll get this done,” Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democrat who is entrusted with lining up the party’s votes, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod and spokesman Robert Gibbs appeared on a series of Sunday morning talk shows to say the stalled overhaul, Obama’s top legislative priority, was headed for approval in the House this week.

“I think we will have the votes to pass this,” Axelrod said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Obama delayed his first overseas trip of the year this week to help round up votes for healthcare reform, the focus of a long-running political brawl with Republican opponents that has consumed the U.S. Congress for the last nine months.

House Democrats are scrambling to win final passage of the Senate’s healthcare bill among Democrats unhappy with key provisions — including language on the ban on federal funding for abortion — and nervous about November’s elections in which Republicans could challenge their control of Congress.

In a two-step process, House Democrats want to approve the Senate’s version of the bill sometime this week and make the changes sought by Obama and House Democrats through a separate measure passed under budget reconciliation rules.

Those rules require only a simple majority in the 100-member Senate, bypassing the need for 60 votes to overcome Republican procedural hurdles. The House and Senate hope to finish work on the second bill before starting a two-week Easter recess on March 26.

“I think the House will have passed the Senate bill a week from today,” Gibbs said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Tags: health care reform, healthcare reform, James Clyburn, Nancy Pelosi, President Barack Obama, Robert Gibbs, White House

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Saturday that he’s ready to compromise with Republicans if they’re serious about it but that his health care overhaul must go forward.

Obama’s comments in his weekly Internet and radio address, two days after an all-day bipartisan summit across from the White House, were the latest sign that Democrats are girding to try to plow sweeping health care legislation through Congress with no Republicans on board.

Success will require colossal efforts on the part of Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress to round up votes after a year of corrosive debate and a Senate special-election upset that threw the overhaul effort into limbo last month. But Obama and the Democrats reject the piecemeal approach sought by Republicans and have no intention of scrapping their 10-year, $1 trillion bill and starting over as the GOP demands.

“I am eager and willing to move forward with members of both parties on health care if the other side is serious about coming together to resolve our differences and get this done. But I also believe that we cannot lose the opportunity to meet this challenge,” Obama said.

“The tens of millions of men and women who cannot afford their health insurance cannot wait another generation for us to act. Small businesses cannot wait. Americans with pre-existing conditions cannot wait. State and federal budgets cannot sustain these rising costs.

“It is time for those of us in Washington to live up to our responsibilities to the American people and to future generations,” Obama said. “So let’s get this done.”
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Obama’s legislation would insure some 30 million more Americans over 10 years with a new requirement for nearly everyone to carry insurance and would end insurance company practices such as denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Republicans generally oppose mandates that make everyone get insurance, and although they want people with pre-existing conditions to be able to buy insurance, they would try to address the problem without new requirements on insurance companies.

Obama plans to unveil an updated proposal this coming week, likely on Wednesday, according to press secretary Robert Gibbs. Gibbs suggested it would include concepts put forward by Republicans at the summit. One Republican who was there, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., was contacted Friday by the White House and asked to submit details of suggestions he made on rooting out waste and fraud from the medical system, Coburn’s spokesman said.

Spokesman John Hart said that Coburn views Obama’s legislation as a government takeover and would not be able to support it even if it’s changed to include some of his proposals.

Adding Republican ideas is not likely to win Republican votes because the GOP insists Democrats should start from scratch. But Obama would be able to say that he’d listened to Republicans and attempted to meet them part way, and that could give Democrats political cover to move forward on their own. Doing so would require use of controversial Senate rules that would let Democrats pass legislation with a simple majority instead of the 60-vote supermajority they no longer command.

The approach infuriates Republicans and is opposed by some Democratic moderates because of its partisan nature.

Coburn, the GOP’s weekly address, argued against a Democrats-only bill.

Tags: 30 million, Barack Obama, bipartisan summit, company practices, future generations, health care legislation, insurance companies, piecemeal, pre existing conditions, President Barack Obama, republicans, Sen. Tom Coburn, trillion, Washington