President Obama slammed the health insurance industry and Republicans yesterday as the enemies of health care overhaul. But the president’s immediate roadblocks to achieving his top domestic priority are within his own Democratic Party, as congressional lawmakers remain unable to find a procedural and political path to final passage.

Democrats are bickering over the policy details of a final package. Many House members are fed up with the Senate, annoyed that the chamber known as the world’s Greatest Deliberative Body can’t seem to move on hundreds of bills the House has approved, never mind health care.

And leaders in both chambers are irritated that the White House imposed a deadline of March 18 for a House vote on the Senate version — a demand lawmakers see as not only unrealistic but inappropriate to make of a separate and equal branch of government.

“They were told to knock it off, on the deadline,’’ said a senior Senate Democratic aide familiar with private discussions between congressional leaders and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

The Republicans? They are just happy to sit by and watch members of the majority party fight among themselves, confident that voters will punish both House and Senate Democrats in the fall elections if the Senate passes a bill with a straight majority, bypassing an expected GOP filibuster.

“I believe that if they ram the bill through the House . . . they will lose the [House] majority,’’ warned the House Republican whip, Eric Cantor of Virginia.

Democrats have resigned themselves to using a process known as reconciliation in the Senate, attaching provisions of the measure to a budget bill that cannot be filibustered. While the process is controversial, it has been used by both parties to pass major legislation with an up-or-down vote.

“It would appear to be’’ the only way a health care overhaul will become law, said Senator Christopher Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and one of the architects of the Senate bill. “I had hoped it wouldn’t be.’’

But given the high stakes, “policy trumps process’’ on health care, Dodd said.

Obama made a passionate pitch yesterday for the health care overhaul to a St. Louis audience, saying the package would end “insurance company abuses’’ such as denying coverage to children with preexisting conditions and putting lifetime caps on medical payments. And the president made it clear he backed the idea of attaching the measure to a reconciliation bill.

“It’s time to vote. I’m tired of talking about it,’’ Obama said, drawing cheers from the audience.

Source: http://news.google.com

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