Projo Politics Blog

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration's prospective Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle, won strong support from key senators today as he pledged a bipartisan effort ``to marshal the talent and energy necessary to at last succeed in making health care affordable and accessible for all Americans.''

``The cost of doing nothing may be the most expensive option of all,'' Daschle told senators at the first confirmation hearing of the new Congress. The former Senate Democratic leader noted that since the failure of the last big effort to overhaul of the medical system, in 1994, the number of uninsured has grown from 37 million to 46 million Americans and medical inflation has soared. Health care now claims one dollar in every six from the average family budget - up from a dollar in every 15, he said.

Daschle promised that the new administration will move speedily to launch a retooling of the health care system. He also pledged to work with Republicans on the project and called national health care reform ``one of the greatest challenges of our time.''

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, set the tone for the hearing by telling Daschle, ``I look forward to your early confirmation'' as HHS secretary. Convening his committee for the first time since he was diagnosed last spring with brain cancer, Kennedy called Daschle ``an extraordinary nominee to lead the nation's health care agenda.''

Summing up the choice about health care that faces President-elect Barack Obama and the 111th Congress, Kennedy quoted Daschle's own words back to him. ``Will we honor the unique American ideal that we are responsible for passing this country on to a generation in the future that is better?'' Daschle asked as he departed the Senate after losing his seat in the 1994 elections. ``Or will we forfeit the promise of the future for the reward of the moment?''

Prompted by Kennedy and Sen. Jack Reed, Daschle told stories from his national ``listening tour'' of a great popular hunger for a better medical system. He said he has been especially struck by ``stories about personal bankruptcy'' -- ordinary Americans practically put on the street by the expense of trying to stay healthy.''

Rhode Island Democrat Reed said later in an interview that the health care initiative could ``start rolling'' in the Senate as early as mid-March, in part because Kennedy and other leaders have been working on the issue for months with Obama's team. Still, ``health care is the most complicated issue in the world,'' Reed warned. ``It's the ultimate Rubik's Cube. You get everything right on this particular issue, then you turn it around and -- oops! There are new problems.''

Republicans joined in the expressions of hope for bipartisan action on health care. ``We will disagree'' during the upcoming debate, cautioned the ranking Republican on the committee, Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming. But Enzi - who teamed up with Kennedy to help enact landmark mental health legislation in the last Congress -- stressed the health committee's history of working across party lines in accord with what he called ``the 80-20 rule.''

Enzi said all hands should work on the 80 percent of the policy issues that Democrats and Republicans can agree on, rather than becoming entangled in the ``20 percent that we could discuss forever.''

Another onetime Senate majority leader, former Republican Sen. Bob Dole, helped to introduce the nominee to the health committee by citing two big assets that, in his view, recommend Daschle for the job of reforming health care. ``One, the ability to hit the ground running - 'cause Tom knows this backwards and forwards,'' Dole said. ``And secondly, I think, the fact that he understands Congress.''

``I intend to support you,'' added one of the most experienced Republicans on the panel, Sen. Orin Hatch of Utah.

Daschle strongly suggested that he understands what killed the ambitious health care overhaul that was attempted the last time a Democratic president took office with his party in majority control of both houses of Congress.

Daschle said a solution cannot be imposed on the medical system ``from the top down,'' and he promised to fashion the overhaul through ``an open and transparent process'' - perhaps an implicit acknowledgment of the closed-doors deliberations that sparked controversy for former President Bill Clinton's health care team. Daschle noted that after ``health care reform collapsed in 1994'' there was widespread criticism that the initiative ``took too long'' and that the deliberations were ``too opaque.''

Daschle concluded his opening statement by saying, ``This time the cost of failure is just too high. This time, working together, Democrats and Republicans, it no longer has to be impossible. This time, it can be done.''

 Tags  daschle enzi health care kennedy obama reed

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