Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn’t seem to be on the same page as President Obama on the importance of sticking to a deadline. This afternoon, he said he doesn’t mind giving the Senate Finance Committee more time to work out a health care bill that can win the support of three key Republicans, even if it means the full Senate won’t be able to pass a bill before the August recess.

Obama’s call for the House and Senate to pass bills before August may have been necessary to keep the pressure on lawmakers; as he said at last night’s news conference, “if you don’t set deadlines in this town, things don’t happen.” But it also guaranteed that the media would become fixated with the deadline for its own sake, and as it inevitably slips, it creates the impression of failure even though lawmakers are grappling with real and complicated health care issues.

Reid doesn’t seem to share the view that a delay could kill the health care effort by losing crucial momentum. The Nevada Democrat says the three Finance Committee Republicans who are trying to strike a bipartisan deal — Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, and Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming — are serious senators and deserve time to work something out with Finance Chairman Max Baucus of Montana.

If they can do that, he says, he’ll spend the August recess trying to work out a merger between the Finance bill and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee bill, which are likely to be substantially different.