WASHINGTON — Democratic U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln came away from a Tuesday evening meeting with President Barack Obama still undecided about whether she will support her party’s health-care legislation or possibly even back a planned Republican filibuster.
But one of the nation’s largest liberal political organizations is warning Lincoln, who is up for re-election in 2010, that she could face a well-financed Democratic primary opponent if she sides with Republicans on the health-care issue.
“I have an obligation to my Arkansas constituents,” Lincoln said, “to exhaust all the avenues before the full Senate begins debate on the bill, or even on a motion toproceed to a bill, to ensure that I’ve done everything I can on behalf of Arkansans to get a bill that’s going to be productive and helpful to Arkansas as well as a bill that’s going to be good for the country.”
In a conference call with reporters shortly after her 30-minute Oval Office meeting with Obama, Lincoln restated her opposition to a public-health-insurance option and her insistence that the bill not add to the federal budget deficit and “put taxpayers at risk.”
When asked whether there was any form of a public health-insurance option she could support, Lincoln pointed to her work with the Senate Finance Committee, which produced a plan that has no public option.
“We did demonstrate there that you can expand health insurance coverage without expanding government,” she said.
While the White House meeting - which Lincoln had requested - did not result in any breakthroughs, she called it “a good discussion” and said she looks forward to more conversations with the president, White House officials and Senate leaders.
Lincoln said she has “tremendous concerns” about a public-insurance option. But, she continued, “I’m certainly going to remain actively engaged in finding acceptable solutions that I think both greatly will improve our health-insurance system and avoid the creation of new government health-insurance plans.”
The meeting came just hours after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada acknowledged that lawmakersmay not complete health-care legislation this year, missing Obama’s deadline and pushing debate into a congressional election year. Reid has sent the Senate proposal to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which will come up with a price tag for the bill.
Lincoln and a handful of other moderate Democratic senators have said they will withhold a decision on the legislation until its cost is known and until its text is available. She and fellow Arkansas Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor have said they want the bill to be publicly available on the Internet for at least 72 hours before debate begins.
“We don’t know what’s in there,” Lincoln said, later adding that “there is a lot of unknown up here.”
Once it begins, the Senate debate could go on for weeks, while the House is expected to vote on its bill later this week. But the two versions would still have to be merged into a single compromise bill that would have to be approved by both chambers before it could be sent to the president.
Meanwhile, House Republicans produced a draft healthcare bill Tuesday that focuses on lowering costs rather than extending coverage to nearly all Americans.
The West Wing session served as the latest indication of the pressure Lincoln faces as she ramps up for a re-election campaign next year. The state’s senior senator continues to find herself stuck in the middle of the health-care debate with critics on the right and, increasingly, on the left.
In the wake of last week’s release of the Senate healthcare bill, which includes a public-health-insurance option that would allow states to opt out, Lincoln has steadfastly refused to say whether she will support the bill. She has kept open the potential of siding with Republicans who plan to filibuster it.
That was the case again after her meeting with Obama.
The situation has provided ammunition for critics on both ends of the political spectrum, including the seven Republicans who have announced plans to challenge her in the 2010 election. Now liberals are threatening to draft a Democrat to oppose her in a primary election.
Leading the charge on the liberal flank is the political action committee arm of MoveOn.org, a public policy advocacy group.
On Tuesday, MoveOn.org launched a full-scale assault in Arkansas with radio ads, direct mail and polling data - aimed at persuading Lincoln to support a health-care bill with a public option or at least let it come up for a vote.
Similar efforts are under way in the home states of three other moderate Democratic senators - Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Evan Bayh of Indiana and KentConrad of North Dakota - who also have yet to say whether they’d vote to stop a filibuster.
The Arkansas push followed an e-mail that MoveOn. org sent to 5 million supporters nationwide Monday asking if they’d put their money behind efforts to draft primary opponents for any Democratic senator who sides with Republicans to filibuster the bill.
While that e-mail didn’t target specific lawmakers, only a handful of Democrats - including Lincoln and Bayh - have left open the possibility that they might block the bill. Both are up for re-election next year.
The result of the MoveOn. org e-mail: $2 million in pledges in 24 hours.
“Obviously, we’re hoping this never comes to pass,” MoveOn.org executive director Justin Ruben said of the possibility of drafting a Democratic opponent to run against Lincoln.
“The main thing we wanted to show,” he said, “is if Sen. Lincoln or another Democrat joins with special interests to block an up-or-down vote on health care, there’s going to be enormous anger from their supporters,” who would then be looking for an alternative candidate.
Republicans also were quick to jump in the fray.
Doyle Webb, chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, issued a statement before Lincoln’s meeting with the president, pushing her to help derail the Democratic health-care bill.
To end a filibuster and allow debate on the healthcare bill to proceed, 60 votes will be needed - meaning 58 Democrats plus two Independents who generally vote with them. Once the bill comes up for a vote, it would need only a simple majority of 51 to pass.
So Republicans are characterizing the procedural motion to end a filibuster as the key vote - “a vote for government-run health care that will decrease coverage, increase premiums and harm local small businesses,” as Webb put it.
While Lincoln and other lawmakers got an earful during the August town-hall forums from constituents who oppose the public option, they’re increasingly hearing from constituents who back a public option.
On Thursday, MoveOn.org supporters protested outside Lincoln’s office in Fayetteville. They say they’ll be back at it today outside her offices in Fayetteville and Jonesboro.
MoveOn.org plans to release results of a poll that show that a majority of Arkansans support including a public-health-insurance option in any plan passed by Congress.
That echoes the findings of a different poll released Friday by another pair of liberal advocacy groups - the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America - which also framed their results in the context of Lincoln’s impending decision on the bill.
But Lincoln, whose husband is a doctor, said her critics miss the point.
“The objective here is to get something that’s good for Arkansas,” she said. “Folks on the extreme that just simply want to kind of draw a line in the sand or say ‘My way or the highway’ instead of really working to come up with good ideas of how we get the job done is unfortunately not as constructive as it could be.” Information for this article was contributed by Erica Werner of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/04/2009