Votes on legislation to enact comprehensive national health reform might have to wait until early 2010, the Democratic chairman of a powerful House subcommittee said Wednesday.

Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), who chairs the Ways and Means Committee’s health subcommittee, said Congress is likely to take a slower approach on healthcare reform. He said lawmakers have too many pressing priorities on the economy and other smaller-scale healthcare issues to move quickly on a large healthcare bill next year, as reform activists have advocated.

Congress could be ready to vote by the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010, Stark said. Waiting any longer would put the campaign at risk of being caught up in the politics of the midterm congressional elections.

President-elect Obama has not laid out a timetable but has repeatedly emphasized that the ongoing recession will not prevent him from kick-starting his effort to overhaul the healthcare system. During his campaign for the White House, Obama promised to have comprehensive reform in place by the end of his first term.

Key senators, for their part, already are drafting the legislation that will form the basis of the upper chamber’s health reform efforts, suggesting they’d like to move on reform quickly.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said last week that he wants to introduce a bill soon after the new year begins. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has been working for several months on his own bill.

Obama, Baucus and Kennedy have not called for a vote on a final package in the early days of 2009.

Before the election, influential Democrats such as Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), a Finance Committee member, sought to tamp down expectations for the pace and scope of health reform.

“Healthcare I feel strongly about, but I am not sure that we’re ready for a major national healthcare plan,” Schumer told The Hill in April.

There has been less visible activity on the House side, where the Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce and Education and Labor committees have the lion’s share of the jurisdiction over the components of health reform.

Though Baucus and Kennedy both stress they are basing their health reform legislation on Obama’s campaign platform, Stark believes the new president should be permitted to set the parameters before Congress moves forward.

“I think it’s important that we wait until the new administration,” Stark said — provided the incoming Obama administration does not employ too heavy a hand. President Clinton rankled Democrats in 1993 by presenting Congress with an all-but-ready-made bill without allowing lawmakers the input they desired.

Moreover, Stark noted, Congress needs to resolve several relatively smaller healthcare issues — what he called “deferred maintenance” — before it can move on to the big fight.

Lawmakers have to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by March 31, resolve a 20 percent cut in Medicare fees for physicians due in 2010 and enact legislation to promote electronic medical records and other health information technology tools.

Obama wants to include the health IT language in an economic stimulus bill early next year, while Baucus advocates adding a short-term SCHIP reauthorization to the same legislation.

Stark also indicated that the committees of jurisdiction in the lower chamber need to build toward health reform through regular order. “I think you have to give everybody a chance to have a hearing,” he said.

Interest groups, too, deserve opportunities to make their cases, Stark said. He singled out the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

The health insurance industry, Stark predicted, would never support a Democratic health reform effort, but he said they could be easily overcome.

“They’re going to be easy to roll because nobody likes insurance companies,” he said.