Hoyer: Paying for overhaul holds up health bill

WASHINGTON — The No. 2 Democrat in the House said Friday that a dispute over how to pay for President Barack Obama's sweeping health care overhaul is holding up a deal between House and Senate Democrats, one of several stumbling blocks to reviving the legislation.

Although Obama has reached out to Republicans and plans a televised bipartisan summit later this month, congressional Democrats are trying to work out their differences over taxes, a national clearinghouse for buying insurance and special state exemptions for Medicaid before the session, an agreement that Obama also wants.

Democrats have struggled to resolve these issues from their disparate Senate and House passed bills. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Friday that he was hopeful although he didn't sound overly optimistic in an interview with Maryland reporters in Annapolis.

"I think we certainly have a framework of a basis for an agreement between the two houses but we haven't gotten there yet," Hoyer said.

"It's going to be tough and we'll have to see," he said.

Hoyer's comments came as lawmakers of both parties jockeyed for position ahead of the Feb. 25 summit. Republicans and Democrats alike are skeptical that any bipartisan progress can be made.

In an op-ed Friday, Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., a physician and head of the Republican Study Committee, derided the summit as "simply an attempt by the president to use the White House as a political tool to intimidate his way into a government takeover of health care. The American people and Republicans in Congress will not be taken by this Chicago-style politics."

"It appears our 'pragmatic' president still hasn't gotten the message and remains immovably wedded to the plans already passed in the House and Senate," Price wrote.

In a letter to the top congressional Democrats, the House's leading Republicans criticized the ongoing Democratic negotiations.

"The existence of any kind of backroom health care deal among the White House and Democratic Leaders would certainly make a mockery of the president's stated desire to have a 'bipartisan' and 'transparent' dialogue on this issue," wrote Reps. John Boehner of Ohio, Eric Cantor of Virginia and Mike Pence of Indiana.

A year in the making, the health legislation was on the verge of completion before it was thrust into disarray by an upset loss in a special election last month that denied Democrats their filibuster-proof Senate majority. Since then Democratic leaders have scrambled to pick up the pieces.