Hammering Out the Health Care Bill

Worth Clicking: Blasts from the past wound Romney

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January 05, 2010

Hammering Out the Health Care Bill

An 11-page staff comparison of House and Senate health-reform bills obtained by Politico shows more than 50 "topline differences" still need to be resolved. This is the starting point for a meeting later today at the White House with House and Senate Democratic leaders.

Mike Allen: "White House aides have sought to downplay the challenge of reconciling the two bills. But the chart is an unambiguous reminder that a bill-signing is still a ways off -- and a series of politically-unforgiving and party-straining decisions await Democrats."

While Republicans have criticized the news that Democrats will bypass a formal conference committee and instead play a game of legislative "ping-pong" -- amending the respective health bills until they're identical -- First Read notes that "legislative ping-pong is not all that uncommon of a practice, noting that the S-CHIP and FDA/tobacco laws were reconciled that way."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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January 05, 2010