Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wants (you guessed it) yet more time to reach a health care compromise on the Senate Finance Committee.
Asked by reporters for Kaiser Health News if a mid-September deadline to unveil legislation was still in the works, Grassley said, “If you asked me that on Aug. 6, I would have said yes, I think so, September. But you’re asking me on Aug. 27 and you’ve got the impact of democracy in America. Everybody’s showing up at town meetings.”
As ranking member on the committee, and chief Republican health care negotiator, Grassley has demanded a number of significant compromises, and set benchmarks–such as an 80 vote threshold for legislation–that most observers believe to be unreachable. Senate Minority Whip John Kyl (R-AZ) has said the GOP almost certainly won’t support legislation out of that committee, triggering calls from a growing number of Democrats for Finance chairman Max Baucus to scrap the negotiations and proceed without (or with minimal) Republican support.
