Obama May Rely on Partisan Vote for Health-Care Bill, Aides Say

By Edwin Chen

July 15 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama may rely only on Democrats to push health-care legislation through the U.S. Congress if Republican resistance doesn’t eventually give way, two of the president’s top advisers said.

“Ultimately, this is not about a process, it’s about results,” David Axelrod, Obama’s senior political strategist, said during an interview yesterday in his White House office. “If we’re going to get this thing done, obviously time is a- wasting.”

Both Axelrod and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said taking a partisan route to enacting major health-care legislation isn’t the president’s preferred choice. Yet in separate interviews, each man left that option open.

“We’d like to do it with the votes of members of both parties,” Axelrod said. “But the worst result would be to not get health-care reform done.”

House Democrats yesterday unveiled legislation that would expand health care to millions of Americans over the next decade by raising taxes on the wealthiest households. The Senate has yet to agree on a bill, as Democratic lawmakers struggle to get Republican support.

Emanuel, making a theoretical case for a party-line vote, offered a definition of bipartisanship based not on roll-call votes but on whether Democrats have accepted Republican ideas during the process of negotiations.

He said Democrats already have passed that test, pointing to Republican amendments that the Democratic-controlled Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has adopted.

Republican Ideas

“That’s a test of bipartisanship -- whether you took ideas from both parties,” Emanuel said. “At the end of the day, the test isn’t whether they voted for it,” he said, referring to Republicans. “The test is whether the final product represented some of their ideas. And I think it will.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a statement last night that “Americans want us to work together on proposals that are likely to garner strong bipartisan support --- not rush through bills like the stimulus with little scrutiny and predictable results.”

McConnell referred to the Obama-backed economic stimulus bill that was passed into law in February with no Republican support in the House and three Republican votes in the Senate.

Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah, said in a statement he was “very disappointed to hear recent reports that the administration may give up on a bipartisan solution to health-care reform.” Health care “is not a Democrat or Republican issue, it is an American issue, but, from the start of this health-care debate, Democrats have shut us completely out the process,” he also said.

Dole, Daschle

Two former Senate majority leaders -- Robert Dole, a Republican from Kansas, and Tom Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota who is a White House adviser on health-care policy -- are among those who have inveighed against a partisan approach on such a contentious issue.

During a joint appearance in June as they unveiled their own bipartisan health-care proposal, Dole said he believed Democrats could pass a bill by a party-line vote, even as he expressed disapproval of such a tactic.

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Dole said. “If there’s not a Senate Republican vote for the package, then the American people are going to be very skeptical.

The Democrats have 60 votes in the Senate to 40 for the Republicans, and have a 255-178 advantage in the House, with two vacancies.

‘Couldn’t Agree More’

Daschle at the joint appearance said he “couldn’t agree more” with Dole’s warning about the political fallout from a partisan vote.

Moreover, he expressed doubt that Democrats alone could prevail, because that scenario “assumes unanimity” among the party’s lawmakers, and that isn’t the case.

Obama has yet to secure the support of a pivotal group of Senate Democrats, which includes Evan Bayh of Indiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas. In addition, Senators Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Robert Byrd of West Virginia may miss votes because of poor health.

In the Senate, it takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.

Time Running Short

Time is running short for the House and Senate to pass versions of the legislation before their August recess, a deadline Obama set for each chamber to act.

In entertaining the possibility of a party-line vote on health care, Emanuel cited “reconciliation,” a parliamentary procedure that a dominant party can use to prevent the other party from blocking legislation in the Senate. Invoking reconciliation would allow Senate Democrats to pass a health- care bill with a simple majority rather than the 60 votes needed to overcome stalling tactics.

“It’s not the first priority, or the second priority, or the third priority. We think we can get it done without it,” Emanuel said.

Yet reconciliation “exists as an alternative vehicle,” he said. “That’s what it was created for.”

With time running out, some Democrats have urged Obama to get more deeply involved in the nitty-gritty of legislative negotiations.

Axelrod said the president is likely to do that.

“I can’t guarantee whether his sleeves will be rolled up or not,” he said. “Obviously, as this process evolves, I think he will be very clear about things.”

The White House and Congress are trying to agree on ways to cover the estimated 46 million uninsured Americans and rein in health-care costs.

To contact the reporter on this story: Edwin Chen in Washington at echen32@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: July 15, 2009 00:01 EDT

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