Balance of Power

“If I end up with a bipartisan bill that does nothing about the 100 people in my state who lost health care today,” Dodd said, “they’re not going to think that’s a great result.”

Dodd has been filling in for the committee chairman, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who’s battling brain cancer, as the panel trudges slowly through its work on the health care bill. Committee Republicans don’t think Dodd is shutting them out intentionally; in fact, they’re giving him credit for improving the process since he stepped in for Kennedy two weeks ago.

But they’ve been holding up Kennedy’s counterpart, Finance Chairman Max Baucus of Montana, as the model of a bipartisan chairman, noting that he has put off work on the bill so he can continue his negotiations with ranking Republican Charles E. Grassley of Iowa. “They’re taking extra time, we can take extra time,” Mike Enzi of Wyoming, the ranking Republican on the HELP Committee, said as the panel began its work yesterday.

It’s Baucus, however, who worries many on the left, thinking he’ll give in too easily on progressive priorities like a government-run health plan to compete with private insurers. Dodd, who has suggested he’s open to alternatives, tried to re-emphasize his support for the “public option” today, saying that’s the only way to give the private market enough competition to force it to hold down costs.

At the heart of this whole debate, of course, is Obama’s campaign pledge to work with the Republicans as much as possible. He learned a hard lesson in bipartisanship with the stimulus bill, which all but three Republicans opposed (and one of the three Senate Republicans who voted for it, Arlen Specter of Pennsylania, is a Democrat now). So now, even Obama has trimmed his expectations for working with both sides.

“My general principle is I always want bipartisan support,” Obama told CNBC Tuesday, but “whether I get bipartisan support or not for any given proposal isn’t always up to me. It has to do with the short-term political calculus and the tactics that the House Republicans and the Senate Republicans determine.”

However, Obama added, “what I do have control over is accepting bipartisan ideas, bipartisan policies.” He said he’d be open to establishing health care cooperatives instead of a government-run health plan — the solution being promoted by Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., to some support from Republicans — “if that is a better way to reduce costs and help families and businesses with their health care.”

So expect Obama to be open to some compromises on health care, Dodd to be open but wary of them, and Baucus to be perhaps the most open of all. After that, it will be up to Republicans to decide whether the Democrats get anything in return.