Democrats push forward on healthcare

Reporting from Washington — 

Democrats on Friday turned from the drama of the healthcare summit to the nitty-gritty task of lining up votes to pass a bill without Republican support, as they sought to salvage the sweeping health overhaul championed by President Obama.

They have focused their attention on the House, where old intraparty quarrels over abortion, illegal immigration, costs and taxes are threatening to break out again.

“There was so much focus on the Senate and their search for 60 votes,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who is president of the Democratic freshman class in the House. “That has ignored the real dynamic in the House where we had to sweat buckets of blood” to pass a bill last year. “It’s going to be a serious challenge.”

But even as the effort got underway, there were signs that many rank-and-file Democrats were open to compromises to push the healthcare legislation across the finish line -- perhaps as early as the end of March.

“I don’t want to see any one issue derail healthcare reform,” said Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), an antiabortion Democrat who pushed for tough restrictions on federal funding for abortion in the House bill last year.

Leading liberal lawmakers echoed the call for action. And several of the 39 Democrats who voted against the healthcare legislation in November -- including Reps. Frank Kratovil Jr. of Maryland, Allen Boyd of Florida, Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania and Brian Baird of Washington -- left open the possibility that they might back the Senate healthcare bill coupled with changes along the lines of what Obama proposed this week.

The president on Monday outlined a series of changes including scaling back a tax on high-end health plans and eliminating some special deals cut to win votes.

“What the president put forward and certainly the Senate bill . . . are obviously better than the House bill,” Altmire said.

Democratic leaders are focused on the House because, having lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, they believe the only realistic chance of getting substantial healthcare legislation to the president depends on persuading House Democrats to approve the Senate bill as written.

The House and Senate would both vote on the package of changes sought by House Democrats, but they would do so using a process called budget reconciliation. Under Senate rules, this does not require the 60-vote supermajority needed to quash a filibuster in the Senate.

Speaking to reporters Friday at the Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said she did not think using reconciliation would be a tough sell, noting that what some describe as a “complicated procedure” is really just a “simple majority.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs declined Friday to say whether Obama would back this approach, but said the president would outline his proposed strategy for moving forward on Wednesday.

Obama and his congressional allies have little margin for error.

In November, Pelosi pushed a healthcare bill through the House with just two votes to spare, prevailing 220-215 with the help of Republican Anh “Joseph” Cao of Louisiana, who has since indicated he will not back the healthcare legislation again.

Now, the House Democratic caucus has three fewer members following the death of Pennsylvania’s John P. Murtha and the departures of Robert Wexler of Florida and Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii.

The political climate has also soured for Democrats, underscored by Republican Scott Brown’s victory in last month’s special Massachusetts election to fill the late Edward M. Kennedy’s Senate seat.

And Republicans are pounding red-state Democrats who backed the healthcare bill in November, such as North Dakota’s Earl Pomeroy, who is the target of a new radio ad in his home state by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

“The trend is going against the bill,” said Mississippi Rep. Gene Taylor, a conservative Democrat who voted against the health legislation last fall.

Taylor and other centrist Democrats have said they prefer a more incremental approach.

Perhaps most challenging, the Democrats’ new legislative strategy threatens to undo a series of delicate compromises that House Democratic leaders hammered out last fall to push through their bill.

No issue is more explosive than abortion. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who wrote a provision in the House bill last year barring women who receive federal insurance subsidies from buying any policy that covers the procedure, has already said he would not accept the Senate bill’s restrictions.

The Senate bill would instead require women who receive subsidies to send their insurers a second check to cover the abortion part of their insurance policies. Backers of this approach say that would ensure that no public money goes to cover abortion services.

But Friday, the influential United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which helped get the Stupak provision into the House bill last year, renewed its criticism of the Senate language.

Other House Democrats remain vehemently opposed to a provision in the Senate bill that would tax high-end “Cadillac” health plans, even though the president and others have proposed scaling back the tax.

Still others have expressed concern about using budget reconciliation to advance the healthcare bill.

“I think there would be a perception that we are jamming it through,” said Rep. Baron P. Hill (D-Ind.), a member of the fiscally conservative House Blue Dog Coalition, who backed the healthcare bill in November and now faces a potentially tough reelection fight.

But, like many centrist House Democrats, Hill said he hasn’t “completely closed the door” on backing a reconciliation package.

Democratic leaders believe they may be able to win the support of several House Democrats who voted against the earlier bill, including a number of retiring lawmakers who will not face reelection in November, as well as several freshman lawmakers who were given a pass during last year’s vote.

noam.levey@latimes.com

janet.hook@latimes.com

Peter Nicholas in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.