Stranger things have happened in Washington, but the chances of the current Congress and President Bush making a breakthrough on health care reform seem remote at best.

Despite all the optimism about progress voiced early in the year by strange-bedfellow coalitions of business and labor groups calling for universal care, a couple recent trends would seem to put a limit on what can be accomplished on health care.

First, most issues will eventually dance to the Iraq tune. Senate Republicans once again on Wednesday, July 18, succeeded in halting a bill that would have set a deadline for pulling U.S. troops out of the country. Rather than reaching for a middle ground, Democrats are doubling down on withdrawal, hoping that constituent pressure over the August recess will force enough Republicans to change their position to pass a bill in September.

President Bush is also girding for September, when a progress report is due from the top U.S. commander in Iraq. After the report comes out—no matter how discouraging it is— he’ll ask for patience and fortitude from Congress and the public.

But Democrats will keep pushing back—and eventually, Congress will probably pass a bill calling on Bush to change course. Bush can veto the measure, but such an outcome could signal the official beginning of his status as a lame duck.

This scenario is important to workforce issues because the Iraq showdown in September between Bush and Congress may be the most highly charged executive-legislative branch conflict since the impeachment of President Clinton. It could get ugly. The potential for this brawl to undermine other issues is high.

Broad health care reform is likely to be a casualty. But its demise doesn’t depend on an Iraq debacle. Look at what happened a few weeks ago on immigration. The collapse of comprehensive reform demonstrated how difficult it is to move complex legislation in today’s closely divided Senate—or to achieve consensus in the closely divided electorate.

Health care, compared to immigration, is a much more difficult issue. There are more players—employers, doctors, hospitals, patient advocacy groups, to name a few—and many more moving parts. If you thought that immigration caused fissures among and within political parties and interest groups, wait until the health care debate gets under way.

One small piece of it is already getting hung up—the part that everyone thought would be easy. On Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee passed a bill to expand a children’s health insurance program to cover nearly 10 million children.

The prediction early in the year was that extending coverage for kids would be the first— and most achievable—step in a broader reform effort.

Not so much. President Bush is threatening to veto the $60 billion bill, which contains a $35 billion increase in spending. Bush is proposing a $5 billion boost. In addition, he is concerned that the children’s program will allow in too many adults in an attempt to “federalize” medicine.

Not only does he think the bill’s too big, but he wants to attach to it his idea to give individuals the same tax break that corporations receive for purchasing health coverage. Even Republicans, who support the tax reform, are telling Bush it needs to be considered separately from the children’s bill—and doesn’t have enough bipartisan support anyway.

If this kind of conflict is arising over a simple health care fix, wait until the bigger issues come to the fore.

You may have noticed that I post blog items infrequently. Although I do file online stories from Washington regularly for the News in Brief section of our Web site, I tend not to keep up with my blog.

I will try to remedy this situation. But I’m glad that I haven’t posted anything new about immigration until now. If I had, my analysis would have been wrong.

When it became clear that the Senate bill was going to be revived on Tuesday, I would have written about how powerful a position the presidency is—no matter who occupies the White House. I would have marveled at the fact that President Bush, with approval ratings in the 30s, got his way on Iraq funding in May and was influencing the Senate on immigration in June.

What the president wants, he (or one day, she) gets if he fights hard enough and skillfully enough for it. Never mind.

Bush’s weakness was demonstrated in bold relief on Thursday when a vote to end debate on the immigration bill failed 53-46. Here’s how you read that number: 46 senators supported the president’s position that the compromise immigration bill should move on to a final vote. The number had to reach 60 to end the filibuster.

Although some “ayes” turned to “nays” at the end, when the vote was clearly lost, managing to get only 46 votes on cloture is a blowout loss for the president. This comes despite a lot of hard work on the Hill by Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

The depth of the defeat can be measured by the fact that those voting against cloture were predominantly Republican, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. When the top-ranking Republican on Capitol Hill abandons you in a crucial vote on the centerpiece of your remaining domestic agenda, you know you have grave problems.

But the Democrats are not going to emerge unscathed from the immigration bill’s demise. Senate Majority Leader Harry, D-Nevada, lost 12 Democrats to the “nay” side on cloture. They were a diverse group—liberals and conservatives, freshmen and veterans.

What’s likely to happen is that over time, after passions cool, the American public will blame both Republicans and Democrats for the failure of immigration reform.

Americans might also come to realize that Congress—and especially the Senate—is designed to deal with major issues at a measured pace.

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