Democrats to Shift Strategy - Roll Call

Democrats to Shift Strategy - Roll Call: "Congressional Democrats are struggling to get out from under the weight of their unfinished work on a health care overhaul and come up with an election-year agenda that will help revive their flagging political fortunes.

The Democrats’ plan is to wrap work on the reform package — and a number of other knotty items left over from 2009 — as quickly as possible so they can pivot to selling their legislative achievements and teeing up less ambitious, consumer-friendly items.

Democrats on both sides of the Capitol don’t expect to make much progress on formulating their offensive until they finish last year’s business. Beyond the grueling work of marrying the chambers’ disparate versions of the health care revamp, lawmakers need to find agreement on a long-term increase in the federal debt limit that will also enshrine pay-as-you-go budgeting in law and establish a commission to tackle entitlement spending, an extension of the estate tax that fell short in the Senate at the end of last year and an extension of the USA PATRIOT Act, among others."