July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said he hopes a bipartisan compromise on health-care legislation can be reached today, even as he complained that President Barack Obama is “making it difficult.”

Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said Obama’s opposition to the idea of taxing health-care benefits is “not helping us.” Baucus had planned to offset about $320 billion of the cost of legislation overhauling the health-care system by ending an income-tax exclusion for employer-paid health benefits. Obama and Senate Democratic leaders have pressed him to consider other options.

“He does not want the exclusion,” Baucus said, referring to Obama. “That’s making it difficult.”

White House spokesman Bill Burton said any disagreement over such a tax is a small dispute in a “great week” in which both the Senate and House are making progress with versions of the health-care legislation.

“Nobody said it would be easy,” Burton said. “There are obviously bumps along the way getting final passage of the legislation in both the House and the Senate. We have been able to make a lot of progress and those comments notwithstanding, this week has been a great week.”

Possible Agreement

Baucus said it remains possible some members of his panel, which is taking the lead on the legislation, will agree to a compromise on the bill as early as today. “I hope we could reach some kind of agreement by the end of the day,” he told reporters after meeting with some committee members in his office on Capitol Hill.

The committee has weighed a plan to tax health benefits that exceed 110 percent of the plan offered to federal employees, which amounts to benefits above $17,240 for a family of four. Obama has pushed for alternative approaches, and Democratic leaders last week told Baucus the benefits tax lacks support among other party members and the public.

The tax is opposed by Democratic-leaning labor unions.

In recent days, the finance panel talks have shifted toward a cap that would be set much higher and affect fewer people, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat and participant in the negotiations, has said.

Conrad said today that tax increases the committee might include in its bill are each smaller in scale, with almost a dozen under consideration at a meeting this morning.

One idea is to assess as much as $100 billion in new fees on health-insurance policies over the next 10 years. That’s an idea advocated by several Democrats on the Finance Committee, including Chuck Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Senate Democratic leader.

Conrad said lawmakers are still formulating how such a fee might be structured, and whether to include it. “It’s too early to say,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 16, 2009 15:44 EDT