Former McCain adviser: Democrats won’t get 60 votes on healthcare reform

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s top economic adviser on the Arizona Republican’s 2008 campaign for the White House, said on Wednesday night, “The divide in the Democratic Party is broader than the divide between Republicans and Democrats.”
 
“I genuinely don’t see how you get to 60 [votes in the Senate],” Holtz-Eakin said.
 
When pressed on the fact that McCain this past weekend predicted that Democrats would pass some type of health reform, Holtz-Eakin joked, “What does he know? He lost!”
 
{mosads}A laughing Holtz-Eakin said he would likely take grief for making that remark.
 
While the former Congressional Budget Office director doesn’t believe Democrats can pass a massive bill, he thinks that Democrats will eventually pass some type of scaled-back healthcare reform measure, possibly by using the partisan tool of budget reconciliation. Under those budget rules, Democrats would only need 51 votes to pass healthcare reform.
 
During a dinner with reporters near Capitol Hill hosted by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Holtz-Eakin – a fellow at the institute – challenged the media on its recent coverage of the Democratic effort to overhaul the nation’s healthcare system.
 
He noted Democrats have missed many deadlines on healthcare reform, questioning the notion that they have political momentum.
 
“There’s no momentum,” he said, criticizing Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) decision this week to alienate Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) by backing a public option in the bill that is expected to hit the Senate floor next month.
 
“They need [Snowe]. What was that?” Holtz-Eakin said.
 
Holtz-Eakin, while saying that he’s been “wrong a lot,” believes Democrats will pass a less ambitious healthcare reform bill, but won’t enact it until the spring of 2010.
 
He said there are many problems with the healthcare system and it needs to be reformed, but said the Democratic proposals are not the remedy.
 
“I would take nothing in a heartbeat” over the Democratic plans, he said.
 
He acknowledged that Republicans did not handle healthcare issues well when they controlled Congress and the White House. In 2003, the GOP-led Congress passed a Medicare drug benefit that CBO estimated would balloon the deficit by nearly $400 billion over 10 years.
 
While President Barack Obama has vowed to offset every penny of healthcare reform, Holtz-Eakin said Democrats are using gimmicks to mask their healthcare spending, claiming they don’t have the offsets to pay for a $1 trillion of new coverage benefits.
 
Addressing government spending, Holtz-Eakin likened what Republicans did on the 2003 Medicare drug law to a “misdemeanor” and what Democrats are trying to do on healthcare reform as a “felony.”