Specter: Healthcare will pass without GOP help

Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) predicted health care legislation will pass this year, but will most likely do so with little or no help from the Republicans.

“My judgment is that it is going to pass and going to happen this year,” Specter said about of health care legislation at a conference Friday morning.

Specter is a long time champion of care heath care issues and has had two public battles with cancer.

Specter when asked seemed pessimistic about the prospects of a bipartisan consensus emerging on the question of health care.

“A bipartisan approach that is highly speculative,” he said. “Bipartisan has not been exactly been noteworthy in the Congress of the United States recently.”

He noted that Sens. Enzi (R-Wy.) and Grassley (R-Iowa) have appeared open to working with democrats, but in the same breath criticized house republicans for the hard-line voting style.

Specter said critical of his formal colleagues said, “Republicans were of one mind” when they decided to uniformly reject the Democratic-back stimulus bill.

Specter who recently joined the Democratic may represent the critical 60th vote Democrats needed for cloture in the Senate to move the health care legislation through.

–Michael M. Gleeson