Republicans soothed by Reid on healthcare

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday met with a group of Republican senators amid escalating speculation that Democrats in the upper chamber are poised to abandon their hopes of crafting a bipartisan healthcare reform bill.

Reid’s decision to call the meeting with Republicans comes as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has repeatedly postponed releasing his bill while liberals grow anxious that the Montana Democrat’s legislation will be too GOP-friendly.

{mosads}Baucus’s delays and the dwindling legislative days remaining before the August recess had triggered GOP concerns that Reid was going to pull the rug out from his Finance Committee chairman.

Reid told Republicans that is not the case. The majority leader met in the Capitol with four GOP members of the Finance Committee: Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Olympia Snowe (Maine), Orrin Hatch (Utah) and Mike Enzi (Wyo.), who also is the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

The Republican senators left the meeting convinced that bipartisan healthcare reform talks are not running up against a strict timeline.

The information relayed by Reid was welcomed by GOP members but has triggered more skepticism that Democrats will attain their goal of passing healthcare legislation through the upper chamber before the August recess.

“Bipartisan talks are going to continue, and not continue under a very hard timeline,” Grassley said.

“[Reid] understands the enormity of this issue and the challenges it presents and that it’s most important to be able to build a bipartisan consensus,” Snowe said. “If that requires more time, it requires more time.”

But a spokesman for Reid said after the meeting that Democrats are still committed to moving the bill out of their chamber before the five-week break.

And Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) and Judd Gregg (N.H.) — two of the three highest-ranking Republicans on the HELP Committee — expressed doubt Wednesday that their committee would finish its version of the bill in time to meet the August deadline.

If the bipartisan Senate negotiations do not conclude in the coming weeks, Democrats would fail to deliver on President Obama’s plan for the House and Senate to pass their respective healthcare reform bills before departing Washington.

Reid released a statement after the meeting saying he welcomed the bipartisan talks, but stopped short of saying the process would not be subject to a deadline.

{mosads}“Democrats have said from the beginning of this Congress and throughout this debate that with the health of our economy and our citizens at stake, our strong preference is to pass a bipartisan bill that lowers crushing healthcare costs for the middle class,” Reid said. “I appreciate some of our Republican colleagues’ demonstrated commitment to that goal, and I look forward to more Republicans joining us at the negotiating table.”

The sit-down marks an increase in Reid’s involvement in the healthcare reform process, which so far has been handled almost exclusively by the Democratic chairmen of the Finance and HELP committees.

In addition to saying Reid promised them more time, Snowe said the Republican senators were offered seats at the table for the eventual House-Senate conference committee to iron out the final legislation.

“He did agree to having a very open conference, which is also important to that stage,” she said.

Notably, Reid met with the four Republicans on a day when media outlets reported he had pressured Baucus to pay less heed to GOP demands. Reid announced the meeting on Tuesday afternoon.

Vice President Biden on Wednesday reiterated Obama’s demands that the House and Senate pass their healthcare measures before the August recess. Prior to making that statement, Biden met with Reid and Baucus at the White House to discuss healthcare.

Obama wants a final bill on his desk by Oct. 15, a prospect that becomes less likely the longer Congress takes to complete its work, giving Republicans and special interests more time to mount counterattacks.

Baucus has been working with the same four Republican senators for months to seek an elusive bipartisan deal.

Last month, the committee postponed releasing its draft bill and scheduling a markup because of cost concerns.

Moreover, Democrats and Republicans had failed to come to terms on some of the most politically volatile issues, including whether to create a government-run health insurance plan; whether employers should be legally required to provide health insurance; and whether to tax the value of some employee health benefits.

To keep the timeline of Senate passage before Aug. 7, the Finance Committee would have to introduce a bill, hold several days of markup and then work with the leadership and the HELP Committee to combine their measures.

With less than five weeks before the scheduled recess and the Senate also slated to consider the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, freeing bipartisan healthcare talks from deadlines is risky.

The HELP Committee continued its slow progress toward completing the markup of its portion of the bill Wednesday, but Enzi and Snowe said it could not go to the Senate floor without the Finance Committee’s product. “You need the financing as well, and Finance has it all,” Snowe said.

{mosads}After a meeting with Finance Committee Democrats, Baucus on Wednesday said, “We agree when we agree” and refused to be pinned down on any timeframe for an agreement, a markup or floor consideration.

Baucus also said that the committee is seeking ways to generate $320 billion in new tax revenue over 10 years.

“We’re just trying to get all different combinations of alternatives to see how we basically raise $320 billion over 10 years in a way that minimizes senators’ angst, which always occurs whenever you’re raising revenues,” Baucus said.

For instance, the Finance Committee is looking at ways to establish a tax on workplace benefits that would affect fewer people by targeting high-value insurance plans, high-income workers or both.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) talked at length about offsets. He pointed out that if they need $320 billion in revenue and the bill is supposed to cost no more than $1 trillion, then it follows that they need to identify $600 billion or so in savings, most of which he said would come from Medicare and Medicaid or elsewhere within the healthcare system.

“We’ve already got the spending-savings, that package, pretty well agreed to, so we’re talking about revenue options, some healthcare-related, some non-healthcare-related,” he said.

Conrad said taxing health benefits and a high-income surtax are “on the table,” adding that taxing soda and alcohol now appears unlikely.

Taxing benefits would risk Democratic support, Conrad said, while a high-income tax like the surtax would risk losing Republican support.

He said, “That’s exactly part of the calculation, isn’t it?”

J. Taylor Rushing contributed to this article.