Dems To White House: Enough With The Health Care Timelines Already!

Dems can dither away another year on health care reform at their own peril.

Hah, Rahm, and by extension, Obama, hoist by his/their own petard(s) for not pushing on HCR six months ago.

What a bunch of idiots. They ask for Obama's leadership, Obama has his COS provide some basic instructions, aka a due date, and they freak out.

....

Just looked up and admiralm was saying the same thing I was thinking.

Dems are just looking for excuses not to pass HCR it seems. If they go into break with nothing to show AGAIN, and the advertisements fire up and keep pounding on HCR to not pass, the chances go down imho to pass it.

def not good news

Let me guess, the GOP promised to really, really play along now - but only after the Easter break. Or maybe it was just the blue dogs who said they're coming around but not there yet and need more time - taking their delay, delay, delay orders from their paymasters. I guess the lobbyists needed more time to roll out their next offensive.

They're all bloody useless. Don't want to do nothing except talk about it.

I don't think they need a final deadline but I strongly believe that NO ONE SHOULD GO HOME for Easter vacation until after health care reform is voted on.

Doesn't the bill HAVE to be passed by the middle of April or the Senate bill can't be fixed by reconciliation? If that is true, then once the Easter break comes HCR is dead.

I agree with Congressional Democrats on this. The time for the White House to have exercised leadership on health care reform was last summer when it twiddled its thumbs as Reid let the Gang of Six drag the process out interminably.

Now the White House has to rely on Hill Democrats to pull its chestnuts out of the fire. They can do it, but it's a tricky environment. Stupak announces he won't accept Senate abortion provisions one day and then he's more accommodating the next. The Blue Dogs are restless. The Republicans are united and hostile. Then Kucinich out of the blue announces his intention to be the Nader of health reform, if need be. In this environment, it's not helpful to have the White House press secretary punch up a date that's just two weeks away. (Why the WH flack and not the health czar or Secretary of HHS?)

The only date that matters is the date that the House and Senate agree on a budget resolution. Everything else is window dressing. Without that resolution, there's no procedural way forward, because reconciliation instructions depend on a budget resolution and are attached to a budget resolution. That date is normally around April 15. So, I think we have about six weeks to get this right. Why enact the Senate bill in mid-March and provide the right wing with four weeks to shoot at it and attack reconciliation? Much more sensible to line up the votes and then get all the agony out of the way at once.

This will either all fall into place very quickly and very late, or it will all fall apart. My bet is that it will fall into place, and it will all happen in perhaps 48-72 hours, sometime in April. House passes Senate bill. Obama immediately signs. House and Senate immediately pass Budget Resolution (on 20-hour clock) with reconciliation instructions attached to it.

One does wonder how Stupak and the Coat-hanger Contingent figure into Waxman's thinking.

You get the feeling that Rahm keeps setting deadlines because he really just wants it to go away. Keeping the pressure on is fine, but setting deadlines at this point is counterproductive since it sets Democrats up for another failure if/when the deadline isn't met.

If they had done their damn jobs last summer, instead of dicking around and letting the Republicans trash the plans to death, then they wouldn't feel pressured by these 'deadlines'. It's their own fault.