White House does not expect conference bill before State of the Union speech

Although a deal was struck Tuesday to get a vote on the Senate health bill before Christmas, White House officials said Wednesday that they don't expect a conference bill to pass both houses before President Barack Obama's State of the Union address in late January or early February, Politico reports. Democratic congressional leaders had earlier said they planned to reconcile the differences in the House and Senate measures and send Obama a bill before the speech. "Officials at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue hope to avoid a formal conference — appointing conferees requires a series of votes. Some House members want the formal process, but the differences are more likely to be hashed out among Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi, [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid and the White House, with some personal involvement by the president. Then Congressional Budget Office scoring could take seven to 10 days" before the merged bill is complete (Allen, 12/23).

The Associated Press reports that Democrats and Republicans are both viewing passage of health care reform in the Senate as inevitable. Senators are scheduled to vote on the measure at 8 a.m. on Thursday, Christmas Eve.

The timeline is "11 hours earlier than originally scheduled, thanks to a deal struck Tuesday between Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Republicans had been threatening to use all the time available to them, which would have kept the Senate in session late into the night before Christmas." But bad weather and Reid's shoring up of the 60 votes in his caucus all but assures approval.

"Unable to prevent passage of the landmark legislation, Republicans are stepping up their criticism of it, focusing in on the special deals some senators got." Those deals include Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., who secured federal dollars for his state to help pay for a Medicaid expansion (Werner, 12/23).

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram/McClatchy: McConnell said "that he'd been willing to stay late into Christmas Eve because 'it's important that we take the time to analyze it in every way that we can before the final votes are taken in the Senate.'" He vowed that the debate is not over (Lightman and Talev, 12/22).

The Hill reports that Reid had wanted to leave Dec. 23, but Republicans were pressed by "conservative activists" to push the vote to Christmas Eve. "'We hope to be able to complete it (Wednesday),' Reid said. 'Certainly with ice storms coming to the Midwest we hope that we can finish tomorrow and not have to be here Christmas Eve.'" But in the end, Reid and McConnell agreed to the Christmas Eve morning timeline, meaning negotiations will soon begin to merge the Senate and House bills (Young, 12/22).