Many words but few revelations from health care summit

It wasn’t a disaster for either Republicans or Democrats. It wasn’t a total bore either. And while there were some combative moments, the two sides managed to remain largely civil.

In the end, the big White House health-care summit was basically what it was expected to be: many hours of talk that will ultimately be seen to have served as an anchor on which Democrats steadied their legislative ship while they tried to regain momentum for a push through Congress.

Nonetheless, some news and themes emerged:

President Obama has no problem with using reconciliation to force a bill through Congress

Sen. John McCain of Arizona made a poignant case for why the little-used budget maneuver should be used, casting it as an abuse of power and recalling his own actions to buck the Republican party when they were ready to jam judicial nominees down Democrats’ throats in 1995.

“There has been reconciliation, but not at the level of an issue of this magnitude and I think it could harm the future of our country and our institution, which I love a great deal, for a long, long time,” McCain said.

Obama shrugged.

“I think the American people aren’t always all that interested in procedures inside the Senate. I do think that they want a vote on how we’re going to move this forward,” he said.

In his final comments of the day, Obama argued to Republicans, and to the American people watching on TV, that he had made numerous concessions to conservative ideas, and said that Republicans should do the same and meet him halfway.

But, he said, if a deal can’t be reached “in a month’s time or a few week’s time or six weeks time … then I think we’ve got to go ahead and make some decisions, and that’s what elections are for.”

Republicans, however, pointed to reports that the White House intends to try to push a bill through Congress regardless of whether they jumped on board or not.

“What it was is, ‘We’ll invite you down, and if we don’t think we can convince you we’re ramming it through,’ rather than having a real serious debate about the issues and trying to meet in the middle. So I’m pretty discouraged,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, in an interview after the meeting.