Dems at Odds on Paying for Obamacare

Today, the likelihood that the Democrats will be able to rush through a health care package before the August recess is increasingly in doubt.

The financing of Obamacare has the Democrats twisted in knots. Earlier in the week, the Congressional Budget Office found that the still incomplete Kennedy-Dodd health care bill would cost $1.3 trillion, while only covering an additional 16 million individuals.  This news was so bad, the administration, which owes its existence in part to Senator Kennedy’s primary support, span>retreated from the ailing Chairman’s bill.< To pay for their reforms, Democrats at the House Ways and Means Committee are span>now considering a Value Added Tax<, which would undermine Obama’s promise of tax cuts for 95% of Americans. Democrats at the Senate Finance Committee are span>considering a tax on employer-provided health care benefits<, anathema to the unions. The President has proposed further cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, span>enraging the hospitals.< And today the Senate Finance Committee announced it is delaying a markup of its bill until after the July 4 recess.  No doubt, this decision was made following a CBO estimate that put the price tag of the Democrats’ Finance Committee product at span>more than $1.6 trillion, presumably with politically problematic offsets<. Only a week ago, span>the conventional wisdom< was that the President’s respect for Congress and the legislative process – in contrast to his predecessors Clinton and Bush – had elevated the prospects for comprehensive health care reform.  While not an inevitability, the President appeared to have cracked the code when it came to passing his sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care delivery system. Today, the likelihood that the Democrats will be able to rush through a health care package before the August recess is increasingly in doubt.  And as with the 2007 immigration debate, sunshine on these bills is the last thing proponents of reform need. What a difference a week makes.