By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — A comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s health care system may not be achievable in the near future, Sen. Mark Pryor said today.
“There’s a possibility, a real possibility, that health care reform will not get done this year,” Pryor, D-Ark., said in a conference call with reporters.
Pryor said no one knows what will happen, but at this point the effort is not on the fast track.
“Everything right now is just at the discussion stage,” he said. “I don’t know of any hard and fast plan that anyone is really pushing. I think people are just talking to see at this moment in time what’s possible and what’s best.”
Democrats’ efforts to pass health care legislation hit a snag with last week’s election in Massachusetts of a Republican, Scott Brown, to the U.S. Senate seat previously held by the late Ted Kennedy. Democrats now lack the 60 votes needed to prevent a Republican filibuster as they try to merge separate House and Senate bills.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today that despite the setback, giving up on the health care overhaul is not an option.
Asked if Congress might abandon the effort, Pelosi said, “I don’t see that as a possibility. We will have something.”
Some have suggested the Senate could use the reconciliation process, which would require 51 votes instead of 60, to pass a bill satisfactory to both chambers.
Several moderate Democrats, including Arkansas’ Blanche Lincoln, have said they oppose that idea. Lincoln said Tuesday the process should be transparent and should not involve “last-minute efforts to force changes.”
Pryor told reporters today he was not necessarily opposed to the idea, but it was not his first choice and he doubted it would happen.
“I think it’s people talking right now over on the House side trying to figure out a way forward on health care, but my sense is, in the end reconciliation will not even be attempted,” he said.
Pryor also told reporters he supports President Obama’s proposed three-year freeze on discretionary, non-security spending.
“I think it is necessary, and I think it is important for us to understand it as part of a larger effort to address our spending,” he said.
Pryor recalled that in the 1990s Bill Clinton “turned the big deficits back then into the largest surplus in history. We need to have that same discipline and that same restraint.”
Liberals and conservatives who criticize the plan are doing so “for all the wrong reasons,” Pryor said.
“The liberals don’t want to cut anything. Well, that’s not realistic. We have to get our fiscal house in order,” he said.
“The conservatives are coming out and saying, ‘well, he needs to cut more.’ But they’re not giving us any specifics of what they would propose to cut.”
A plan to create a bipartisan commission to address the deficit failed Tuesday in the Senate, though both Pryor and Lincoln voted for it. The commission would have had the power to force a congressional vote on its recommendations.
Obama is expected to present tonight an alternative plan for a deficit commission that would not have the power to force a vote. Pryor told reporters he supports the idea.
“I think we’ve gotten to the point with our national debt, with our annual deficits, where we have to do things like this in order to get our fiscal house in order,” he said.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
