Republicans hope for health care repeal, push Harry Reid for action

By Karoun Demirjian

Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2011 | 2:30 p.m.

WASHINGTON - Republicans are rattling chains in anticipation of Wednesday’s big vote to repeal health care, a vote that almost everybody expects will pass on something close to a party-line vote, but die at the Senate’s doorstep.

Everyone except the Republican leadership.

“If Harry Reid is so confident a repeal will die in the Senate, then he should bring it up for a vote,” Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said this afternoon, challenging the Senate’s Majority Leader and Nevada’s senior statesman no fewer than three times during a briefing with reporters to prove his confidence by having a fight out in the open. “If Harry Reid is so confident that the members of that body (the Senate) are where he is, then let’s see a vote in that body.”

Once they get their repeal vote in the House, anti-”Obamacare” campaigners have pledged to turn their attention to the Senate, with a lead campaigner, Ken Hoagland of “Repeal It Now,” promising to deliver “10 million petitions to the Senate” over the summer to force it to take up the bill.

Either way, Reid isn’t expected to bend to the pressure.

“Not only would repeal not pass, but according to a poll by AP over the weekend, three out of four people don’t want it to,” said Reid spokesman Zac Petkanas. “Why? Because full repeal means raising taxes on small business, reopening the Medicare donut hole and putting insurance companies back in charge of your health care.”

If it’s not taken up in the Senate, Republicans in the House don’t plan to drop the issue: if a repeal doesn’t clear Congress, expect them to try to use the House’s primary power of the purse to defund it, bit by bit, as they make other cuts to federal government programs to make good on their pledge to bring non-defense spending levels back to where they were in 2008.

Republican leaders have said they also plan to forge a workable alternative to the health care bill, illustrating their commitment by pointing out that committee hearings to do just that start this week. But so far there’s no set timetable for when that will be done, or whether it will be one comprehensive measure — as leaders seem to prefer — or an a la carte series of bills, as the more conservative firebrands in the party are pushing for. But as one of them indicated Tuesday afternoon, to expect a full replacement before a full repeal of the current law would be wishful thinking.

“We’re marking time through 2011 and 2012,” said Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa, when asked about the timetable for a replacement at a press conference Tuesday to trumpet Wednesday’s scheduled repeal vote.