Rival camps ramp up efforts
Getty Images Supporters of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul protest Tuesday outside a hotel in Washington, D.C., where a health insurance industry group was meeting.
WASHINGTON – Thousands of liberal public-option backers and conservative tea partiers launched last-chance campaigns Tuesday in the nation's capital to persuade Congress to pass – or reject – sweeping health care legislation.
Democratic congressional leaders conceded that they may not have the votes for final passage of the overhaul by March 26, when Congress is to break for spring recess. They're trying to persuade party moderates and abortion foes to go along. President Barack Obama wants final votes even earlier, before his March 18 departure on an overseas trip. That appears unlikely.
Republicans launched an all-out effort to derail the bill, urging congressional candidates to hold town hall meetings, organize voters over the Internet and denounce any special deals that may be cut to grease Democrats' votes.
"A vote for this bill opens an entirely new line of attack on House Democrats," wrote Johnny DeStefano, deputy director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, in a memo to candidates.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it will spend as much as $10 million on a television ad claiming that Obama's plan will only worsen the bad economy and job market.
And Obama senior adviser David Axelrod, on a conference call Tuesday, told advocates of the legislation, "What happens in the next 10 days will be critical."
Despite their divergent goals, what these camps share is an acute understanding of what happened last year after Democrats failed to pass the health care overhaul before the monthlong congressional August recess. In the boisterous town hall meetings and small-government tea party protests that followed, all sides learned that delaying a big vote until after a recess buys the opposition time, and that public demonstrations can have an impact on the political process.
"Our intent and our hope is to have no vote take place before recess," said Mark Skoda, founder of the Memphis Tea Party and a spokesman for the "Take the Town Halls to Washington" campaign that began Tuesday.
The group's Web site asked volunteers to travel to Washington before the two-week spring recess to lean on 66 Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives that they consider to be wavering on Obama's plan: "We want to let them know there is only one vote their constituents will support: No on Obamacare."
Organizers plan to videotape the meetings and release them to constituents.
In the pro-legislation camp, thousands of supporters of Obama's plan – many organized by unions and some dressed in hospital gowns with tubes taped to their faces – protested outside a Washington hotel where a meeting was being held by America's Health Insurance Plans, the trade group of health insurers.
Ten protesters crossed a police line saying they were there to make citizens' arrests of insurance officials. Police hauled the 10 away.
At an earlier rally nearby, Howard Dean, the physician, former Vermont governor and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, declared that Republicans are in the bag for insurance companies. He said the question for wavering Democrats is: "Are you for the insurance companies or the American people?"
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a supporter of the overhaul, said demonstrations do sway congressional votes.
"The more people rally, the more it shows people here they care," she said. "It adds to the excitement. It tells you people are engaged."
But Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., a moderate, added that "you have to remember that there are those who are quiet who merit consideration."
Republicans remain united against the legislation.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said lawmakers who support Obama's plan will be casting a vote for "higher taxes, Medicare cuts and higher premiums for most Americans. Those core elements and core features of that bill have not changed."