{"id":420133,"date":"2010-03-12T10:01:39","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T15:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/health\/2010\/03\/12\/what-student-loans-have-to-do-with-the-health-care-bill\/"},"modified":"2010-03-12T10:01:39","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T15:01:39","slug":"what-student-loans-have-to-do-with-the-health-care-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/420133","title":{"rendered":"What Student Loans Have to Do With the Health-Care Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"logo\"Some wrinkles in the health-overhaul orchestrations are in the news this morning:<\/p>\n

Washington Democrats are working on an idea to pair the health-care bill bill with another Democratic priority of increasing federal aid for college students. The notion isn’t a firm plan, but as Senate Budget Committee head Kent Conrad told the Washington Post<\/a>, “I’d say yes, we’re leaning toward it.”<\/p>\n

Mixing the health and education bills might seem a stretch, but Democratic backers figure it might give them a 2-for-1 legislative bang. Dems already plan to use the reconciliation process in the Senate to make fixes to the version of the health bill passed by the Senate on Christmas Eve. <\/p>\n

Adding the education package to the reconciliation vote, which requires a simple majority for passage, could mean both pieces of legislation would clear the Senate without a filibuster. The overhaul of the student loan programs in the education bill is another of the Obama administration’s domestic priorities.<\/p>\n

As for the health overhaul, Democrats remain vexed about how to handle abortion restrictions, but party leaders appear willing to write off the votes of a dozen or so antiabortion Dems in the House if need be, the New York Times<\/a> reports. The House abortion foes want tougher language to ban using federal subsidies to pay for abortions than those contained in the current Senate legislation.<\/p>\n

One compromise would be for the House foes to accept the Senate language initially and then tighten the provisions later. But doubts persist. “I’m not going to trust that [tougher language] is going to pass the House and Senate” after the original bill passes, said Dem Rep. Daniel Lipinski told the WSJ<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Just when health-care bills will be put to a congressional votes remains up in the air. Lawmakers haven’t seen the latest draft texts and the Congressional Budget Office hasn’t calculated estimated costs. A March 18 target, which President Obama had hoped for, isn’t workable at this point, everyone was saying yesterday.<\/p>\n

But House leaders now want the vote to occur before a two-week spring break scheduled to start on March 26, the NYT said. More meetings by House Democrats are slated for today. <\/p>\n

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Some wrinkles in the health-overhaul orchestrations are in the news this morning: Washington Democrats are working on an idea to pair the health-care bill bill with another Democratic priority of increasing federal aid for college students. The notion isn’t a firm plan, but as Senate Budget Committee head Kent Conrad told the Washington Post, “I’d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}