From Bloomberg:
President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders, unable to reach deal with Republicans in health care, are considering alternatives to a bipartisan bill, Senator Charles Schumer said.
Schumer, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday, said Obama and Democratic leaders are “bending over backwards” to win Republican support. “It’s looking less and less likely that certainly the Republican leadership in the House and Senate will want to go for a bipartisan bill,” he said.
The options include passing a bill with just a few Republican votes or passing a bill using the so-called reconciliation process, which would require only 51 votes, said Schumer, a Democrat. The president and his advisers have started devising a strategy to pass a measure by relying only on the Democratic majority in each house of Congress, according to a source who spoke last week on condition of anonymity.