GOP Fears Obama’s Health Summit Is a Trap - Roll Call

GOP Fears Obama’s Health Summit Is a Trap - Roll Call: "President Barack Obama’s call for a bipartisan health care summit was greeted with suspicion Monday by Congressional Republicans, who vowed to approach the televised Feb. 25 meeting with open minds even as they worried that the White House was using them as political “props.”

Hill Democrats were equally cautious. They welcomed the bicameral leadership gathering — saying it was the type of presidential leadership that they’ve been looking for from Obama in their yearlong effort to enact health care reform legislation — but they speculated it might be coming too late to make a difference.

Still, Democrats were hopeful that Obama’s summit would break the logjam over health care legislation, including an impasse that continues to divide liberal and moderate members of the majority. Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, predicted the meeting would shine a light on GOP obstruction and encourage resistant Blue Dog Democrats to end their holdout.

“I think we win [moderates] over by having the obstinacy of the Republicans be clear and obvious,” Grijalva said Monday in an interview. “For reluctant Democrats to be seen as siding with naysayers is probably not good.”

Obama’s goal of generating bipartisan cooperation at this late hour in the process, never mind a deal on health care reform, appears doubtful — at least if the president’s plan is to try to garner Republican support for some combination of the large, comprehensive packages that cleared the House and Senate late last year."