Perhaps the strangest element of Capitol Hill’s months-long health reform debate has been that Democrats — proposing to cover tens of millions of uninsured Americans while banning the worst abuses of the insurance industry — have been branded a public enemy, while Republicans — hell bent on killing the reforms More…
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) press conference at the Capitol this morning is churning dramatic headlines about how health reform is dead. But she really doesn’t say that. In fact, she says just the opposite.
“We have to get a bill passed — we know that,” she More…
With all eyes on the outcome of today’s shockingly close special Senate election in Massachusetts, Washington’s prognosticators are wondering what the Democrats will do on health care reform should GOP candidate Scott Brown steal the seat. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) offered two possibilities today, telling reporters that if More…
Via Roll Call, some key House Democrats indicated last night that there’s been no progress as House and Senate leaders try to iron out the differences between their health reform bills. As a result of the stalemate, they’re predicting that the final bill likely won’t emerge More…
For supporters of the bill to grant Washington, D.C., a voting representative in Congress, it may be 2010 or never. At least that’s the warning coming from former Rep. Tom Davis, the Virginia Republican who championed the D.C.-vote bill for years — to no avail.
You might remember that the More…
A prominent children’s healthcare advocate in Montana is putting pressure on Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Finance Committee, to fight for a provision of the Senate’s health reform bill that would preserve the Children’s Health Insurance Program. House Democrats are pushing to terminate CHIP in 2014, More…
We’ve been writing for months that a major hurdle facing Democratic leaders as they merge the House and Senate heath reform proposals is what to do with the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. The House has proposed to terminate CHIP at the end of 2013, citing the More…
Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, was one of the more successful negotiators during last summer’s climate change debate, winning enormous concessions for some of the nation’s largest polluters in the name of protecting Big Ag. To win Peterson’s vote, for example, House leaders More…
The news that Democrats in the House and Senate will likely marry their health reform bills in closed-door sessions — not in a formal conference committee — strays a long way from President Obama’s campaign-trail claim that the entire process would be televised for the world More…
That’s the word coming from Capitol Hill, where Democratic leaders are wary that Republicans would stall a formal conference, thus delaying passage of the health care reform at the center of President Obama’s domestic agenda. Instead, leaders reportedly will meet informally to merge the House and Senate bills.
CQ More…
rss