By Edwin Chen and Ryan Donmoyer March 14 (Bloomberg) — White House senior adviser David Axelrod said he believes the House of Representatives will approve health-care overhaul legislation by the end of this week, while House Minority Leader John Boehner predicted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have enough votes for passage. “If she had 216 votes, this bill would be long gone,” Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “They tried to pass it in September, October, November, December, January, February. Guess what? They don’t have the votes.” “I am absolutely confident that we are going to be successful,” Axelrod said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. Appearing also on ABC’s “This Week,” he said, “health care deserves an up or down vote, and health care will get an up or down vote.” Pelosi, a California Democrat, signaled she would seek a vote in her chamber on the legislation next week. President Barack Obama is pushing the House and Senate to finish their work before they leave for a two-week recess on March 26. Axelrod underscored the White House’s impatience for final congressional action after a yearlong debate that saw some Republican lawmakers walk away from discussions with Democrats aimed at forging a bipartisan agreement. “Enough game-playing; enough maneuvering,” Axelrod said. “Let’s have an up or down vote.” Sounding uncharacteristically combative, the president’s top political strategist said of the Republican opposition: “I say, let’s have that fight. Make my day. I’m ready.” Insurance Industry In the absence of comprehensive health-insurance overhaul, Axelrod said, 10 million people will lose their insurance in the next decade and allow the insurance industry to “run wild.” The proposal outlined by Obama would reduce the deficit over the first decade “by something on the order of $100 billion and over a $1 trillion over the second decade,” Axelrod said. Health-care costs “are the single greatest upward pressure on the federal deficit,” he said. House leaders are preparing to push two sets of legislation through their chamber. Democrats first have to approve a Senate bill passed in December and then clear a set of changes to the Senate measure through a process called reconciliation. The Senate then would also pass the reconciliation measure. The advantage of reconciliation, which is designed for budget-related measures, is that it only requires a simple majority vote in the Senate. Most major legislation requires 60 votes for passage, and Democrat only control 59 seats. Seeking Assurance The problem is that House Democrats object to some parts of the 10-year, $875 billion Senate bill, so they are seeking assurance that the changes will also be passed. Word from the Senate parliamentarian on March 11 that Obama would first have to sign the Senate measure into law dealt a setback to House Democrats who aren’t sure the upper chamber will act. “At the end of the day, members of the House are being asked to trust an untrustworthy body,” said Representative Anthony Weiner , a New York Democrat, on March 12. The Senate hasn’t passed many of the bills the House sent over in the last year, he said. The House Budget Committee will kick off the legislative process on March 15, according to a congressional aide familiar with the schedule. The No. 2 House Democrat, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, predicted Congress will succeed in passing both the Senate bill and reconciliation package by the March 26 target. “That’s our objective, and I think we will,” he said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend. Mandatory Coverage Democrats are calling for the biggest changes to the medical system in 45 years. Their plan would require Americans to get insurance and offer new purchasing exchanges and government aid to help. Insurers such as Hartford, Connecticut- based Aetna Inc. would get millions of new customers and be required to accept everyone who seeks coverage. The reconciliation changes largely mirror a proposal Obama put forth last month, lawmakers said. The White house estimated the total package would cost $950 billion over 10 years. In anticipation of House action this week, Obama delayed his scheduled departure for a trip to Guam, Indonesia and Australia from March 18 to March 21. To contact the reporters on this story: Edwin Chen in Washington at echen32@bloomberg.net Ryan Donmoyer in Washington at RDonmoyer@bloomberg.net
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Axelrod Predicts Health-Bill Passage; Boehner Says Votes Lacking in House
