WASHINGTON -- Mainstream Democrats close to Barack Obama are warning Republicans about insisting on too many changes to the president's health care overhaul, saying the Democratic-controlled Congress will move ahead without GOP input if they do.
A strong-arm partisan approach may be unpleasant, these prominent Democrats say, but it is better than letting Republicans dictate spending cuts and insurance rules that many Democratic voters oppose.
For weeks, staunchly liberal groups have complained as key Senate Democrats insisted on a bipartisan approach, especially in the Finance Committee. The strategy is giving Republicans more clout than their minority status deserves, these critics said.
Now, similar comments are coming from veteran, pragmatic Democrats who have worked closely with Obama and his top aides. They reject the notion that a controversial Senate tactic _ "reconciliation," which essentially bars the minority party from using filibusters to block legislation _ is unworkable or politically unacceptable in the health care debate.
"I would not hesitate to use it" if efforts at genuine bipartisanship fail, former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle said Monday.
The price that Senate Republicans are demanding so far is too high, said John Podesta, a White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and now head of the Center for American Progress. "There is a point at which you have to move on," Podesta said, and reconciliation can be the vehicle when that time comes.
Unlike most liberal activists, Daschle and Podesta have direct ties to the White House's innermost circles. Podesta headed Obama's transition operation. Daschle was Obama's choice to be "health czar" until income tax problems derailed the plan. Both men have written extensively on health care.
Daschle and Podesta noted they were not speaking for the administration when they met with reporters Monday to discuss their thoughts on Congress's trillion-dollar effort to insure all Americans, control health care costs and revamp the system of incentives for doctors and hospitals.
But they didn't pretend to be total outsiders. "We interact with them daily," Daschle said of Obama's health care advisers.
Their comments come at a crucial time in the debate. When the House and Senate return from a one-week recess on July 6, they will shift into overdrive to try to complete the outlines of a health care overhaul before the August break. Debate in the Senate could be particularly fierce, with liberals insisting on a robust public option for health insurance, and Republicans fighting it.
Whether true bipartisanship can emerge, or whether Democrats decide to bulldoze their way past Republicans, should become clear in what Daschle says will be a historic month.
He and Podesta rejected claims that the reconciliation process has too many parliamentary loopholes and complexities to be an effective tool for enacting a Democratic plan over near-unanimous Republican opposition. Reconciliation would not be easy, Daschle said, but "it's certainly a viable fallback option."
Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, a centrist Democrat who strongly supports a bipartisan approach, differs. "You'd be left with Swiss cheese," he said in an interview.
"No one knows more about the pitfalls of reconciliation" than Conrad, said Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the Finance Committee's top Republican.
Liberal groups say Conrad and his allies are chasing a phantom. Any bill that Grassley and other Republicans would support, they say, would be so watered-down on key matters _ such as providing alternatives to private insurance _ that it would be pointless.
"Bipartisanship isn't worth the price we'd pay," blogger Jason Rosenbaum wrote Monday on the Web site of Health Care for Americans Now.
Physician and former national Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean said in an interview that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., is ignoring the overwhelming support found in polls for a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers. Bipartisanship is fine, Dean said, but not if it gives Grassley and other Republicans the leverage to block a robust public insurance option.
Dean said it's unusual to see "a legislative body so far outside the scope of where the American people are."
Some centrist Democrats say Obama is wise not to give up on bipartisanship too soon. As long as it appears possible, groups representing doctors, hospitals, drug manufacturers and others are making concessions that will boost the overall goal of better and more efficient health care, said Jim Kessler of the centrist group Third Way.
Podesta and Daschle urged lawmakers to establish a commission that would have far-reaching powers to set Medicare reimbursement rates and take other steps if spending and health care targets are not met after five years. They called the idea a "fail-safe" method to make sure the health care system achieves important efficiencies.
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