Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on Tuesday urged the president to delay healthcare reform until the job market considerably improved.



In a letter to the White House this morning, Steele predicted "Democrats and Republicans would stand with [President Barack Obama] and proudly so" if he announced he no longer wanted to pass healthcare reform by the year's end.



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"You wouldn't advise any American to bet the rent check now if they didn't know whether they would have a job next spring. You certainly wouldn't advise them to borrow money to put at risk, if they had no clue if they would be employed," the chairman wrote.

"Much the same, Congress can't afford to throw the American people further in debt now and splurge on a risky health care bill when we may need all the resources at our disposal next year to rebuild a sagging economy," Steele added.



Ultimately, it may not require the president's intervention to keep healthcare reform from passing this year. Senate Democrats are still squabbling over a number of contentions issues in their own bill -- from the shape and scope of the public option, to whether the proposal should include tough abortion language, to many of the taxes included to offset the bill's costs.

The majority party has stressed since Monday that it is beginning to make progress on those fronts, especially with the public option debate. But those compromises are not guaranteed to satisfy all Democrats, further complicating Senate Majority Leader (D-Nev.) Harry Reid's already daunting task of cobbling together 60 votes to avoid a filibuster.



But as that debate raged on at the Capitol this morning, Steele stressed Obama should steer his party away from healthcare reform, for now, and towards labor market reforms and deficit reduction. Only then, the chairman wrote, could the country embark on true economic recovery.

"Until we are sure job creation has begun in earnest, we should put aside our differences on health care," Steele said. "We should watch our spending. We've got an economy to rebuild and restore."

