Casey still negotiating with Nelson on abortion

Negotiations over abortion language in the Senate's healthcare bill continued on Thursday, even after Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Neb.) said that proposed compromise "isn't sufficient."

Although that compromise's chief architect, Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), acknowledged this afternoon Democrats were racing against the clock, he said he remained in contact with Nelson and was making modifications accordingly.

"Part of what we're trying to do is to make sure [that] ...if there is a segregation of funds as it relates to tax dollars and premium dollars that we get that right," said Casey, who has been rather tight-lipped about both the first abortion proposal he offered and the changes he has since made.

"The difficulty here is that we've never had an exchange before," the senator added. "So you're working with something [for] which there's really no model, whereas prior to this, you had Medicaid, for example, which is clearly a publicly funded program, and the federal law says you can't use [federal dollars for abortion]."

Abortion is proving to be a serious political obstacle to Senate Democrats' healthcare bill. Nelson, in particular, has made explicit he will not support any proposal that does not contain tough abortion language, but the draft Casey first pitched to the Nebraska senator earlier this week failed to win his support.

In an interview with local radio, Nelson said he was pleased with the Casey amendment's emphasis on adoption tax credits and pregnancy reduction measures. But, the senator emphasized, "the basic question on the funding of abortion has not been fully answered yet."

Casey ultimately told reporters he would continue negotiating abortion language with Nelson, aiming for a compromise as soon as possible. In the meantime, however, Casey praised the debate itself as historic and necessary, given the scope of what the Senate was about to do.

"There's been a lot of engagement on this issue, in a way that we've never been engaged on this issue," the senator said. "And that's good, even if it leads some people in the same party to have disagreements, and sometimes those disagreements playing out on national television."

---