Graham: Use of reconciliation for health care will hurt climate effort

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Sunday that Democratic plans to use budget reconciliation to complete heath care legislation will “poison the well” for subsequent initiatives – including the climate and energy plan he’s crafting with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.)

“If they do this, it is going to poison the well for anything else they would like to achieve this year or thereafter,” he said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”

“The way [President Obama] is governing on this health care bill, this arrogance, ignoring the American people and trying to jam through a bill that nobody likes and deal out Republicans is going to make it virtually impossible for me or anyone else,” Graham later added.

Republicans are furious that Democrats plan to use a procedural tactic to complete health care legislation that allows them to skirt GOP filibusters.

Graham praised Obama’s stance on climate and energy issues.

The White House is strongly backing major new support for building nuclear power plants and signaled it will make concessions on offshore oil-and-gas drilling in an effort to attract support for a broader climate and energy plan.

“I have been working with Lieberman and Kerry. We have come a long way on the climate and energy issue. This is one issue where the President has been great. He is saying all the right things to give us a chance to become energy independent and clean up the air and create jobs,” Graham said.

But he said the health care push is putting that effort and others in peril, and suggested a scaled-back effort on health care. “Get a field goal, Mr. President, on health care and then let's go to energy and climate, do financial regulation and let’s try to work together to reform our laws and close Gitmo,” he said.

Republicans say reconciliation is being used inappropriately for heath care legislation. But Democrats counter that the GOP has employed the tactic on numerous occasions, such as passage of former President Bush’s tax cuts and the failed GOP-led effort to allow drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Democrats have formed a plan to complete health care legislation under which the House would pass a bill that the Senate approved in December, and then use the reconciliation process to approve a series of fixes to the measure.