As Obama said in his big healthcare speech last week, it's time for Congress to deliver on healthcare. The action this week will happen mostly behind the scenes - in closed-door meetings and in the Senate Finance Committee - where Democrats will try to finalize the details of their healthcare reform legislation so they can start voting on it. Things will be relatively quiet on the floor of the Senate and the House, but it might get interesting if the House decides to vote on a formal censure of Rep. Joe Wilson [R, SC-2] for shouting "You lie!" at the President.

 

On Sunday, the two moderate senators form Maine provided some insights into where things stand on a bipartisan healthcare deal. Sen. Olympia Snowe [R, ME], the most likely Republican to vote with the Democrats on healthcare, said that the public insurance option plan that is supported by President Obama and most Democrats should be scrapped in order to get a bill passed. Obama "should take it off the table," Snowe said "Face the Nation." "It would give real momentum to building consensus." But she repeated her support for including a "trigger" mechanism in the bill that would allow for a public insurance option to be set up in states where a sizable percentage of people remain uninsured after the new subsidies and insurance reforms take effect.

But Snowe's colleague, Sen. Susan Collins [R, ME], arguably the second most likely cross-over vote for the Democrats, said on Sunday that she would not support a bill with a trigger. "The problem with trigger is it just delays the public option," she said on CNN's State of the Nation program, "because the people who are going to be making the determination about whether the market is competitive enough, want the public option." In Febuary, Collins and Snowe were the only two Republicans to vote with the Democrats on passing the stimulus bill, but Collins' flat-out opposition to the public option plan make her a less likely ally for the Democrats when it comes to healthcare reform.

The White House held strong in their support for the public option on Sunday." [President Obama] "continues to believe it's a good idea, he continues to advocate it and I'm not willing to accept that it's not going to be in the final package," David Axelrod, a senior advisor to President Obama, said on Sunday. "But what he also said, and what we've all said, is that this is not the whole of health insurance reform and that we should not let the whole debate ... circulate around this one question and lose the best opportunity we've had in generations to do something very significant about a problem that is just getting worse." And in a speech in Minneapolis, the President said: "I think one of the options should be a public insurance option." "I have said that I'm open to different ideas on how to set this up, but I'm not going to back down on the basic principle that if Americans can't find affordable coverage we're going to provide you a choice."

Also on the Sunday talk shows, Rep. Joe Wilson [R, SC-2], the member of Congress who heckled President Obama during his joint speech to Congress, said that he is done apologizing. "I apologized one time. The apology was accepted by the president and the vice president, who I know. I'm not apologizing again," Wilson said on Fox News Sunday. His remarks greatly increase the chances that House Democrats will bring forth a resolution of disapproval against him this week. Under House decorum rules, it is considered unparliamentary to call the President a "liar," attribute hypocrisy to him, accuse him of demagoguery, or use other such insulting language. The House Democratic leadership has acknowledged Wilson's violation and says that it needs to be resolved by a formal apology before the House or a resolution of disapproval.

We'll be writing this week on some of the more significant bills coming to the House floor this week. And, of course, we'll be following the healthcare negotiations.


KTC