While two Senators are lamenting the lack of presidential intervention in shaping the Senate bill, a House member is demanding he take a direct role in the House/Senate conference.
In a statement posted to his Web site yesterday, Russ Feingold points the finger at the White House for the loss of a public option in the bill, but nonetheless pledges his support in the final vote.
"I’ve been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down. I continued that fight during recent negotiations, and I refused to sign onto a deal to drop the public option from the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle. Removing the public option from the Senate bill is the wrong move, and eliminates $25 billion in savings. I will be urging members of the House and Senate who draft the final bill to make sure this essential provision is included.
"But while the loss of the public option is a bitter pill to swallow, on balance, the bill still delivers meaningful reform, and the cost of inaction is simply too high...."
Likewise, though for potentially different policy reasons, Jim Webb expressed his dissatisfaction with Obama [sub. req.], and he holds out the possibility of voting against the conference report:
Over the past year, the process of debating this issue often overwhelmed the substance of fixing the problem. The Obama Administration declared health care reform to be a major domestic objective, but they did not offer the Congress a bill. Nor did they propose a specific set of objectives from which legislation could be derived. Consequently, legislation was developed independently through five different Congressional committees, three in the House and two in the Senate. This resulted in a large amount of contradictory information and a great deal of confusion among our public. As the debate moved forward in the Senate, I and my staff worked through thousands of pages of legislation, and did our best to shape the bill as well as to bring proper focus to key areas. I repeatedly took a number of difficult votes, often breaking with my party, in order to strengthen the bill....
Assuming the bill is passed by the Senate, I will examine closely the conference report produced at the next stage of the legislative process. Significant deviations from the core principles I insisted on this compromise must remain, or I will withhold my support.
And on the House side, Elijah Cummings is demanding greater involvement by Obama himself:
The president must participate directly in negotiations next month to merge the House and Senate's healthcare bills on "a day to day, hour by hour" basis, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) stressed Monday.
Lawmakers in both chambers will have to reconcile a number of differences in their healthcare legislation once the Senate passes its bill, but the process of resolving those debates would be daunting without the White House's input, the congressman added.
"I have absolutely no doubt that there will be some changes, and we're going to have to call on the president to get very much involved in this and to get this through," Cummings said.
Neither Feingold nor Webb will have much direct involvement in the conference, so the ultimate impact of their drawing lines in the sand now, given that they've both overcome objections to vote for cloture, threats like this one from Webb are a little empty. But it's more likely they're trying to distance themselves from what they see as a potentially unpopular effort, and put it on Obama's shoulders. Ownership of this bill is ultimately going to be Obama's, but there can be little question that the mess the Senate has made of it is why the bill as a whole is polling poorly now, and Congressional approval ratings are in the tank.
Cummings admonition to the president is probably also intended as a bit of burden-sharing for the responsibility of this bill. Of course, the House bill is significantly better, so there's actually some credit that could be shared if Obama helps get these stronger elements into conference.