
Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen, center, said Sunday that his party does not currently have 'a mortal lock' on the necessary votes to pass health care reform in the House. Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen, center, said Sunday that his party does not currently have 'a mortal lock' on the necessary votes to pass health care reform in the House. Washington (CNN) - Despite a call from the White House for health care legislation to pass this month, key Democrats on Sunday avoided any promises about how soon the next steps may come. "I believe it will pass. Do we have a mortal lock? No," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told CNN's "State of the Union." Questions remain about specifics of the final legislation, and until then "it's going to be hard to get people to commit" to a vote in the House, he added. The president's own secretary of Health and Human Services skirted repeated questions about the timeline set by the White House. "I think the president has called for an up or down vote. I'm confident that we'll have that up or down vote," Kathleen Sebelius told NBC's "Meet the Press." Pressed about whether the president would come back to the legislation if it does not pass this month, she responded, "I think it's realistic because the American people are desperate for something to help them." She added, "the time clock is not about... a Congressional tick-tock - what Americans want is something to be done." The administration has called for the sweeping legislation to be at the president's desk before the Easter vacation at the end of the month. And it has set an even earlier date for the House to vote on the Senate's version of the bill - one of two major steps in passing the bill. "The president leaves for Indonesia and Australia on March 18th, and... I believe that, based on conversations that I've had in the building, that we're on schedule to get this through the House by then," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Thursday. The second major step in the Democrats' strategy - having the Senate vote on a separate package of amendments to the bill through a simple majority vote using a process called budget reconciliation - would "come closely thereafter," Gibbs said. Gibbs added that he was "not setting a deadline," but going by conversations with people about a schedule. Two Democratic leadership aides told CNN last week that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is aiming to have the House complete its action by March 17. They said language in the legislation would be posted in the coming days, and that final language would be available 72 hours before a vote. Deadlines come and gone have been a staple of President Obama's efforts to push through health care reform. "State of the Union" on Sunday ran a montage of clips of the president from the past year, first calling for a final bill "before the August recess," then for getting "health care done by the end of this year." But the … [Read more...]









