President Clinton heads to Capitol Hill today for a pep talk with Democrats on getting health-care reform moving.
Democrats and the White House played down the importance of the meeting, but it's clear lawmakers are stalled over one of the biggest promises of Clinton's presidential campaign.
Press secretary Dee Dee Myers says Clinton is huddling with Democratic leaders to "keep everybody focused on the end game" before the Memorial Day recess. The White House also is scheduling a bipartisan health-care meeting after Clinton's trip to Europe in June.
"This is a regular part of the legislative process," says Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine.
He says there's nothing unusual about Clinton's visit.
"We meet with the president," Mitchell says. "He asks us what's going on. We tell him what's going on. He then encourages us in our efforts."
But even Clinton's allies appear to be stumped over how to win support for a major element of his reform package - requiring all employers to pay premiums to insure their workers.
"We know what the president's program is. It's not going to be passed in its present form," says Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which is working on its own reform package.
But there was a sign of movement Tuesday: Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., emerged from the finance panel's latest private session to say that he and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., the chairman, were on the verge of putting together a bipartisan bill over the 10-day Memorial Day break.
"It will be a middle-of-the-road bill. . . . Both sides will be pulled toward the center," says Packwood, the panel's top Republican. He says that there isn't enough support for "an immediate employer mandate."
At the same time, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who has been pushing to get a health package through his Senate Labor Committee, concedes he won't meet his self-imposed Memorial Day deadline for completing a bill.
"Haste right now would make waste," Kennedy says. "The more time we spend, the more progress we are making. It would be foolish to jeopardize further cooperation by forcing too many decisions prematurely."
There were other obstacles. The possibility of an indictment against Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee and a critical backer of Clinton's bill, could make it harder for that panel to finish its health-reform plan. If indicted, Rostenkowski would be forced to relinquish his chairmanship. Mitchell says it doesn't matter who leads the all-important House panel: "I think we're going to get a bill, in any event."
Also Tuesday, Sen. John Breaux, D-La., backed off his proposal to exempt the smallest businesses from a requirement to insure their workers. "I don't think it's picking up a lot of support," he says. "I'm trying to find out what will float, and the best way to do that is throw a lot of things onto the water."
Last week, Breaux, who had opposed an employer mandate, floated an option that would include an employer mandate but give the smallest businesses a break on the requirement to provide insurance to all workers.
Now he's considering a strategy by which mandates would be triggered only if voluntary measures don't succeed in getting coverage for the uninsured.
The latest USA TODAY Poll, taken last weekend, shows approval of Clinton's handling of health care the same as last month - 41% approve and 52% disapprove. The margin of error is 3 percentage points. Clinton gets a slight bump on the question of whether people favor or oppose his plan: 46% favor and 49% oppose. In April, 43% favored and 47% opposed.
