Jousting begins ahead of health-care summit
The health-care proposal that will appear on the White House Web site Monday will be a broad “starting point” for discussion at this week’s televised health-care summit, not a detailed piece of legislation, a top administration official said Sunday.
Senior aides to President Obama said the document will propose changes to the health-care legislation that passed in the Senate late last year, including lower taxes on expensive insurance plans and higher subsidies for working families to get health coverage. The changes could add up to $200 billion to the Senate bill’s $871 billion price tag.
But the online materials will not address a controversial question — whether Democratic leaders would use a parliamentary procedure known as “reconciliation” to try to pass health-care changes without the usual 60 votes in the Senate, officials said.
“This proposal aims to be a starting point for the conversation on Thursday,” said a senior White House aide who requested anonymity because the document was not public yet. “We are going in with an open mind. It will not be very detailed. We are not dealing with process now, just substance.”
Republicans have accused the president of using Thursday’s summit as political theater, and they had raised the prospect of not attending. But the Senate’s top Republican promised Sunday that he and his members are “ready to participate,” while accusing the Democrats of being “arrogant.”
“You know, they are saying, ‘Ignore the wishes of the American people. We know more about this than you do. And we’re going to jam it down your throats no matter what,’ ” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on “Fox News Sunday.”
White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said in response that “the upcoming meeting is an opportunity to get beyond oft-repeated and completely false talking points like these.”
McConnell dismissed the idea of a GOP boycott of the summit, saying that “we’re discussing the — sort of the makeup of the room and that sort of thing, but yeah, I intend to be there and my members will be there and ready to participate.”
McConnell said, however, that his party will continue to oppose Democrats if they try to use reconciliation.
“We believe that we think a better way to go is to, step by step, move in the direction of dealing with the cost issue, targeting things like junk lawsuits against doctors and hospitals, interstate insurance competition, small-association health plans,” he added.
Health care dominated discussions at the National Governors Association for a second day Sunday. Four leaders of the organization issued a plea to Obama and Congress for states to have a greater voice in the deliberations over health care. But they had no plan to offer, nor did they ask to be included Thursday.
A White House official noted that Obama is meeting with the governors for an hour on Monday.
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