WASHINGTON — The most senior African American in Congress offered some unsolicited advice Monday to President Barack Obama on how to get his signature health care bill through a balky Senate: knock their heads together.

"The president could take a few pages from Lyndon Johnson's book...and start knocking heads together," said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Conyers, who spoke to reporters in Detroit, first came to Congress in 1965, the year Medicare and the Voting Rights Act both passed under the strong hand of Johnson, by then the president. Obama was not yet 4 years old.

The House passed the sweeping health care legislation late Saturday on a narrow 220-215 vote. By Sunday, the bill was being declared a nonstarter in the Senate.

A government health insurance plan included in the House bill is unacceptable to a few Democratic moderates who hold the balance of power in the there. These senators are locked in a battle with liberals, with the fate of health care legislation at stake.

On Sunday, Obama urged the Senate to follow the lead of the House, like a runner in a relay race. The president says he's confident senators will do the right thing.

But Sen. Joe Lieberman wasted no time in saying he can't support the public insurance plan in the House bill.

If a government plan is part of the deal, "as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent whose vote Democrats need to overcome GOP filibusters.

"The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said.

Democrats did not line up to challenge him. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has yet to schedule floor debate and hinted last week that senators may not be able to finish health care this year.

Nonetheless, the House vote provided an important lesson in how to succeed with less-than-perfect party unity, and one that Senate Democrats may be able to adapt. House Democrats overcame their own divisions and broke an impasse that threatened the bill after liberals grudgingly accepted tougher restrictions on abortion funding, as abortion opponents demanded.

In the Senate, the stumbling block is the idea of the government competing with private insurers. Liberals may have to swallow hard and accept a deal without a public plan to keep the legislation alive. As in the House, the compromise appears to be to the right of the political spectrum.