After his cancer diagnosis and a six-month absence from Washington, the senior senator will press ahead for comprehensive coverage for uninsured
WASHINGTON -- When he endorsed Barack Obama for president in January, Sen. Edward Kennedy said it was because his young colleague "understands what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called 'the fierce urgency of now.'"
Ten months later, the haunting quote that Obama made a theme of his campaign holds an even deeper significance for Kennedy.
Though battling incurable brain cancer, the 76-year-old Massachusetts Democrat returned to Capitol Hill this week. He's a man on a mission that so far has proved impossible: enactment of comprehensive health care legislation that would provide coverage for the nation's estimated 47 million people who don't have health insurance.
"I am looking forward to working with Barack Obama on health care," Kennedy said Monday as he headed to a luncheon with his staff after a six-month absence. The senator leaned on a silver-headed cane but otherwise looked hale, his trademark white mane intact despite continuing cancer treatments.
Kennedy's reappearance six months to the day after he had the seizure that led to his brain cancer diagnosis sets up a potentially dramatic race against time as he seeks to cajole the notoriously slow-moving Senate into delivering the capstone of his four-decade legislative career.
Opening up the nation's health care system to all Americans is "the cause of my life," Kennedy told delegates to the Democratic National Convention, where he made an emotional and unexpected appearance last August.
It won't be easy to achieve. The effort to provide universal health care coverage -- and figure out how to pay for it -- turned into a political catastrophe for former president Bill Clinton and then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, and cost the Democrats control of Congress in the 1994 elections.
As a result, Democrats are approaching health care reform cautiously. In his campaign, Obama made expanding access to health care a key issue, but he stopped short of the goal long held by many Democrats of a single, government-run system. Instead, the president-elect is proposing to expand the current employer-based system.
Some Democrats are urging a go-slow approach. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said he's more concerned with "doing it right rather than doing it within a set time frame."
Even so, the growing numbers of uninsured Americans and the skyrocketing costs for employers is creating momentum for action. While Republicans will not accept a health care system that's government-run, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., says he sees possibilities for bipartisan compromise. "If it includes private choices, including being able to buy your own policy and choose your own doctor, then we can talk," said Alexander, the third-ranking Senate Republican leader.
Players from across the political spectrum say no one is in a better position to resolve the turf wars and ideological disputes inherent in the health care debate than Kennedy -- in part because he's a seasoned political deal-maker, and in part because he's a popular member of an intimate club whose members are acutely aware of his precarious health.
Kennedy's return to the Senate is "very significant," says Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., one of several participants in a meeting that Kennedy convened Wednesday to discuss prospects for a health care deal.
"It changes the dynamic of the debate," said Ron Pollack of Families USA, an advocacy group for health care consumers. "There is no way to overestimate the influence Sen. Kennedy will have."
Even in a Senate that includes Clinton, a New York Democrat who led the last, unsuccessful effort for comprehensive health care as first lady in 1993, no one is more closely identified with health care than Kennedy.
He's one of only three sitting senators who voted on the 1965 bill that created Medicare, the national health insurance system for senior citizens. He chairs the committee on Health, Education Labor and Pensions.
He left his sickbed against doctors' advice in July to cast a vote against cuts in payments to physicians who treat Medicare patients. "I wasn't going to take the chance that my vote would make the difference," he said.
The applause that greeted Kennedy's surprise appearance that day -- even from Republicans whose filibuster the senator had come to foil -- illustrated the enormous reservoir of affection for Kennedy in the Senate.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., another cancer survivor, said Kennedy's "personal situation" is likely to add weight to his health care crusade.
"People are very sympathetic," Specter said.
Working through illness
Kennedy began laying the groundwork for a major health care initiative before he knew the identity of the next president.
On June 24, three weeks after Kennedy had delicate brain surgery at Duke University, his staff convened the first of 15 bipartisan roundtables, allowing Democratic and Republican staff members to gather ideas from key players in the health care debate. The idea, Kennedy spokesman Anthony Coley said, was to hear from various groups with a stake in the debate: consumers, labor unions, health care providers, employers, pharmaceutical companies and insurance firms.
It's typical of Kennedy's legislative style. Though one of the most liberal members of the Senate, he's known for the agreements he's struck with ideological opposites: President Bush on major education legislation and Sen. John McCain, the GOP's unsuccessful presidential nominee, on an immigration overhaul.
Enzi, one of the Senate's most conservative members, said he and Kennedy have teamed up to enact more than 40 bills. "Senator Kennedy and I never compromise," he said. "We leave out what we can't agree on so we can get things done."
Kennedy has not yet laid out his own ideas for a health care bill. His strategy has been to listen to others -- including those with rival proposals.
Last week, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., unveiled a health care plan that would require all Americans to obtain health insurance and that would tax employer-provided health care benefits -- ideas opposed by Obama. Kennedy's response: a statement praising Baucus for focusing on health care and a phone call that Baucus described as "very complimentary."
The liberal icon also has been working to cultivate allies in the business community. "He's been great," said Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, one of the corporate leaders Kennedy has consulted on health care. "He listens."
Behind the scenes, Kennedy has been preparing to take the lead role in the health care debate. On Sept. 18, Kennedy convened a caucus of Democratic committee members by video teleconference from Hyannis Port, Mass.
On Tuesday, he formed three working groups to study different aspects of health care -- asking Clinton to head the group on insurance coverage. A day later, he convened a bipartisan meeting of key senators to discuss health care legislation.
Contrasting styles
Kennedy's under-the-radar negotiations are not how Obama promised to handle the health care issue. In a January debate among Democratic presidential candidates, Obama complimented Clinton for spearheading her husband's health care efforts when she was first lady but argued that the bill failed because it was drafted in secret.
He vowed to build support for expanding health care by "bringing all parties together, and broadcasting negotiations on C-SPAN so the American people can see what the choices are."
That's not Kennedy's style. And it's hardly likely that Obama will try to change a senior senator whom he carefully cultivated.
Obama sought Kennedy's blessing before entering the presidential race and checked with him from time to time but didn't pressure Kennedy for an endorsement. That discretion and deference were rewarded when, after a bitter South Carolina primary against Clinton, Obama won Kennedy's endorsement.
Standing next to Caroline Kennedy, his niece and the daughter of former president John F. Kennedy, the Massachusetts senator draped the mantle of Camelot around the slender shoulders of another young, vibrant and, yes, inexperienced senator. "It is time again for a new generation of leadership," he declared .
Yet Kennedy, who underwent surgery in June to reduce the size of his brain tumor, is demonstrating that at least one member of the old generation believes he's got a contribution to make.
As he told the gaggle of reporters and cameras that welcomed his arrival back to the Capitol, "we've got a lot of work to do."
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