House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had no influence on the healthcare waivers granted last month to businesses in her district, an official with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said Tuesday.

Republican leaders on and off Capitol Hill had slammed the Obama administration for granting a growing number of health-reform waivers to constituents of the top House Democrat. But Steve Larsen, director of HHS' Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, said those businesses were given no special treatment. 

"These temporary waivers are necessary to help ensure that the waiters, dishwashers, maids, home health aides, and other hardworking people can keep the health coverage they have, while we transition to 2014, when they will have access to affordable coverage in a competitive marketplace," Larsen told The Hill in an email. 

"HHS applied the same standard to the application from Flex Plan Services that it uses when reviewing any application for a temporary waiver."

Another HHS official told The Hill that Flex-Plan Services, a third party administrator used by many low-wage service industries such as restaurants and hotels on the West Coast, filed a request for 92 waivers on March 23, all of which were approved. The waivers are for Health Reimbursement Arrangements, whereby employers reimburse their workers for a limited amount of health expenses.

The approved waivers include 69 in California, 20 in Washington, two in Georgia and one in Alaska, the HHS official noted. 

But Jim Aitken, the owner of Bellevue, Wash.-based Flex-Plan Services, denied that his company has ever applied for HHS waivers under the new healthcare law.

"We didn't file any waivers for anybody," Aitken told The Hill Tuesday.

A Jan. 7 letter to HHS from Flex-Plan Services attorney Tina Ann Davis indicates that the company has been interested in the waivers on behalf of clients.

"This letter is a request for waiver of the requirements of PHS Act section 2711 for the stand-alone HRAs that Flex-Plan Services administers," Davis wrote in the letter obtained by The Hill. "HRAs allow these employers to comply with the local law while providing an affordable health care benefit to their employees.

"Application of the annual and lifetime limit rule to stand-alone HRAs would completely eliminate the benefit," she warned.

Shown the letter Tuesday, Aitken said, "We were interested in how the waivers were being given out ... But we have had nothing to do with any waivers whatsoever." 

On Tuesday, the Daily Caller, a right-leaning news publication, reported that HHS approved 204 new waivers in April, with 38 of those - or roughly 19 percent - going to businesses located in Pelosi's San Francisco district.

Republicans - including House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and former-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin - were quick to pounce, suggesting that Pelosi's constituents were given special treatment.

"It looks like ObamaCare's backroom sweetheart deals didn't end when it became law," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel told the Daily Caller. 

Palin weighed in as well, accusing the Obama administration of corruption for granting the waivers to constituents of a key Democratic ally.

"Seriously, this is corrupt," Palin told the Daily Caller. "And anyone who still supports the Pelosi-Reid-Obama agenda of centralized government takeovers of the free market and the corresponding crony capitalism is, in my book, complicit."

Republicans also played up the news of businesses in Pelosi's district racing to be exempt from certain requirements of the new healthcare law.

"Remember when former Speaker Pelosi said we needed to pass the ObamaCare bill to find out what was in it?" Steel told The Hill in an email. "I guess once they found out, the high-end eateries and spas in her Congressional District weren't big fans."

Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami accused the Republicans of spinning the story to win political points.  

"It is pathetic that there are those who would be cheering for Americans to lose their minimum health coverage or see their premiums increase for political purposes," Elshami said in an email. "The complaints coming from this crowd that supports ending Medicare is just another example of putting politics first."

The Democrats' new healthcare law prevents health insurers from capping annual benefits, beginning in 2014. The provision is being phased in, with minimum benefits set at $750,000 for 2011.

The one-year waivers are designed to prevent significant premium increases or an erosion of coverage. At the start of May, HHS had approved 1,372 waivers.

More than 90 percent of the waiver requests have been approved, according to HHS.

Sen. Ben Nelson said Tuesday that he will not support tax increases in any budget proposal - a stance that could make Senate Democrats' chances for reaching agreement on the issue even more difficult.

The Nebraska Democrat, who is up for re-election next year, told reporters, "I'm only focused on cuts, not on raising taxes. If we start getting our attention over to raising taxes, I can assure you that many of my colleagues are going to be less interested in cuts."

Nelson's position puts him in line with most Republicans who have said they will not entertain any tax hikes - including those on the rich or on corporations - as part of any budget deal. Republicans and Democrats have been attempting to negotiate a budget deal in order to assure passage of a controversial increase in the debt limit.

"We've got to do our cutting and my fear is if we start talking about raising taxes, you'll lose track and get distracted away from cutting," Nelson said. "We have to cut, cut, cut."

Nelson's comments came in response to a budget outline being crafted by Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

The yet-to-be-introduced proposal, which was the topic of Democrats' caucus luncheon Tuesday, includes tax hikes on upper-income taxpayers, and that proposal has troubled some vulnerable incumbents who worry about being accused of raising taxes.

Still other Members maintain any proposal should include revenue hikes as well as spending reductions.

"Senator Conrad's plan is very interesting to me because it includes all of the above," said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), another moderate lawmaker.

Conrad, a member of the "gang of six," is seeking to cut $4 trillion over 10 years. But key factions in the Democratic Caucus have yet to rally behind any singular plan, which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid alluded to while speaking to reporters after Tuesday's lunch.

"We have a number of moving targets, and [there's] nothing wrong with that," the Nevada Democrat said, referencing the gang of six, Conrad's budget and a bipartisan working group being led by Vice President Joseph Biden.

"Every one of the people involved in those meetings say we're making progress," Reid said.