Obamacare: Obama Open to Partisan Health Care Reform – RAM it Through Congress

President Obama has the votes in Congress.

President Barack Obama may rely only on Democrats to push health-care legislation through the U.S. Congress if Republican opposition doesn’t yield soon, two of the president’s top advisers said.

“Ultimately, this is not about a process, it’s about results,” David Axelrod, Obama’s senior political strategist, said during an interview in his White House office. “If we’re going to get this thing done, obviously time is a-wasting.”

Both Axelrod and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said taking a partisan route to enacting major health-care legislation isn’t the president’s preferred choice. Yet in separate interviews, each man left that option open.

“We’d like to do it with the votes of members of both parties,” Axelrod said. “But the worst result would be to not get health-care reform done.”

House Democrats today unveiled legislation totaling about $1 trillion that would expand health care to millions of Americans over the next decade by raising taxes on the wealthiest households. The Senate has yet to agree on a bill as Democratic lawmakers struggle to get Republican support.

Emanuel, making a theoretical case for a party-line vote, offered a definition of bipartisanship based not on roll-call votes but on whether Democrats have accepted Republican ideas during the process of negotiations.

And he said Democrats already have passed that test, pointing to Republican amendments that the Democratic-controlled Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has adopted.

But, of course, there is political risk for the Democrats, particularly in the U.S. Senate.

I do not see a bipartisan, nationalization of health care and the demise of the health insurance industry on the horizon. The Democrats will blog and blather but political cover is all most of them are seeking.

Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi may ram the bill through but with little or NO GOP support. Thus, creating an issue for Republicans upon which to run in the 2010 midterm Congressional elections.

Republican must be licking their chops for a strong arm from Rahm Emanuel to keep Democrats in line with Obama.