WASHINGTON - Debate raged on unabated Tuesday over the pace and shape of legislation reinventing health care as President Barack Obama tried to remain on the offensive against stiffening opposition, especially from Republicans.
Following a recent pattern, harsh public exchanges ricocheted along Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the Capitol amid laborious work on the measure that Obama has insisted be put together before Congress leaves in August for its recess.
Obama stepped once more before the cameras at the White House to say strides have been made. At the same time, he repeated that the sticker shock that critics keep citing will be worse in the absence of an overhaul and exhorted Washington to "insist that this time it will be different."
Republicans hewed to the emerging message: It's too expensive and it's all happening too fast.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky argued that a rapid-fire approach carries pitfalls similar to ones he said have adversely affected a US$787 billion economic stimulus package. "Health care reform is too important to rush through and get wrong," McConnell argued in a floor speech.
Said Obama: "The American people understand that the status quo is unacceptable."
Beyond the talking points cascading through the capital, Obama had a meeting planned later Tuesday with Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has been among the major players in developing legislation that among other things would spread the health care coverage umbrella over the roughly 50 million people who don't now have that protection.
"They don't care who's up or who's down politically in Washington," the president said. "They care about what's going on in their own lives. They don't care about the latest line of political attack. They care about whether their families will be crushed by rising premiums."
At a crucial moment in the health care discussions, Obama's comments did not contain new details or arguments. He tried to keep up the momentum by emphasizing the positive -- the broad areas of agreement so far -- as opposed to the differences and obstacles that threaten to derail or postpone the effort.
He's trying to stay in front of the mounting debate on health care reform by offering statements and doing interviews nearly by the day. His mission is to get the House and Senate to pass bills before they break for their August recess, a brisk timeframe that has lawmakers working overtime and Republican critics lashing at the president, accusing him of rushing and overreaching. The goal is to rein in long-term health costs while simultaneously spreading coverage to the uninsured.
Obama repeated key points of agreement between the White House and lawmakers. Among them: people should not be denied coverage because of an existing health problem, they should not lose coverage if they change jobs, and they should have choices in their coverage. Left unsaid were the deep divisions and tough decisions about how to pay for the extensions of coverage to millions who don't have it and how to contain those growing costs in the long run.
"I know that there is a tendency in Washington to accentuate the differences instead of underscoring common ground," Obama said. "But make no mistake: We are closer than ever before to the reform that the American people need, and we're going to get the job done."
Obama's increased personal involvement comes with sticker shock reverberating around Capitol Hill in the wake of a bleak prognosis from the Congressional Budget Office last week saying lawmakers' health proposals wouldn't hold down costs.
The president generically criticized critics of the legislation as people who are either trying to delay action until unnamed "special interests" can kill the bills, or others who just want to score political points.
"That's one path we can travel," he said. "Or we can come together and insist that this time it will be different. We can choose action over inaction. We can choose progress over the politics of the moment."
Earlier, in an interview aired on NBC's "Today," Obama said none of the bills being negotiated in Congress are "where they need to be" yet.
The House is scheduled to break for the summer on July 31; the Senate goes on recess on Aug. 7.
Obama defended his timetable, telling NBC that "if you don't set a deadline in this town, nothing happens." But he also signaled in a separate interview with PBS on Monday that he'd be willing to give ground a bit if were a matter of legislation spilling over "by a few day or a week."
Obama is pressing his case hard this week: at a children's hospital on Monday, in the Rose Garden Tuesday, at a prime-time news conference Wednesday and a town hall in Ohio on Thursday.
Obama remains noncommittal on a surtax to pay for the overhaul, which some experts have said could cost over $1 trillion in the next several years to reconstitute and incorporate some 46 million uninsured into the system. In the NBC interview, he did reiterate his opposition to taxing people's employer-provided health benefits, however.
Obama has said that people making over $250,000 a year should have to pay more, and he defended his insistence on getting a bill from lawmakers before they leave next month.
Obama's meeting later Tuesday follows a committee drafting session that lasted past midnight Monday as the panel slogged through numerous amendments, with majority Democrats turning back Republican attempts to change the bill.
But Committee Chairman Henry Waxman's bigger difficulties were with his own party, particularly a bloc of fiscally conservative Democrats who oppose the legislation in its current form over costs and other issues.
Waxman and his aides have been deep in talks with these conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats, and as the panel wrapped up its work in the wee hours Waxman announced he was canceling a drafting session planned for Tuesday so negotiations could continue.
"We're having conversations with different members to work out some of the issues so we can make this thing move forward," Waxman, D-Calif., told reporters. He declined to elaborate.
The $1.5 trillion, 10-year House bill would, for the first time, require all individuals to have health insurance and all employers to provide it. The poor would get subsidies to buy insurance and insurers would be barred from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions.
