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Dems say health care bill to pass this year
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-09-11 06:01 There, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., has said he will convene the panel the week after next to vote on legislation that would meet Obama's goal of expanding health care, providing consumer protection to those with coverage, and slow the growth of medical spending overall.
Democrats account for 13 members on the 23-member committee, but Baucus, Sens. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Kent Conrad, D-N.D., have been involved in intensive bipartisan negotiations that produced the co-op plan, and Sens. Tom Carper of Delaware and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas are part of the party's moderate wing and unlikely to support a liberal alternative. Whatever bill the Finance Committee approves must be blended with legislation approved earlier in another panel, and is expected to reach the Senate floor by early October. Baucus told reporters the president's speech had been "confidence-building" for those involved in weeks of painstaking bipartisan negotiations. "It's uncannily similar to what we're working on," he said, avoiding mention of the disagreement over government insurance sales. "The president's speech kind of breathed new life into what we're doing because this is basically what our proposal is." Obama's speech amounted to an attempt to restart the health care debate after a summer in which Republican critics confronted Democrats at town hall meetings and on television. "They hit us with their best shot; distortion, misrepresentation, and obstruction," Pelosi said. But she said Democrats had "sustained the effort admirably" and now "we're in a better place to go forward."
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