The bipartisan meeting will be an attempt to reach across the aisle, but not to start over, Obama says. | REUTERS W.H. plans televised health meeting

President Barack Obama is planning to host a televised meeting with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders on health care reform.

The Feb. 25 meeting is an attempt to reach across the aisle but not a signal that the president plans to start over, as Republicans have demanded, a White House official said.


“I want to come back [after the Presidents Day congressional recess] and have a large meeting — Republicans and Democrats — to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” Obama said in an interview with Katie Couric during CBS’s Super Bowl pre-game show Sunday.

Obama said he wants to “look at the Republican ideas that are out there.”

“If we can go, step by step, through a series of these issues and arrive at some agreements, then, procedurally, there’s no reason why we can’t do it a lot faster the process took last year,” he said.

In a statement, the official said, “What the president will not do is let this moment slip away. He hopes to have Republican support in doing so — but he is going to move forward on health reform.”

Obama first suggested reopening talks with Republicans during his State of the Union address last month, and reiterated the call at a Democratic fundraiser Thursday, but the White House had kept details of his plan under wraps until Sunday.

The idea has been met previously with skepticism by the congressional leaders of both parties. Republicans say they see little room for compromise because the bill should be scrapped, while Democrats argue they have already tried a bipartisan approach, but failed.

But since the Democratic loss in the Massachusetts Senate race, Obama has been forced to rework his legislative strategy – both by striking a more bipartisan tone, and returning to his campaign pledge of providing more transparency. He’s been dogged by questions about why he failed to live up to his campaign promise of televising the health care negotiations on C-SPAN.

The half-day meeting will take place at Blair House, and be broadcast live, presumably by C-SPAN, making it the first televised White House meeting involving the president since a forum last March.

There were 11 other roundtable discussions, usually led by White House health care reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle, that were webstreamed and, in some cases, carried live by C-Span.

“While he’s been very clear that he supports the House and Senate bills, if Republicans or anyone else has a plan for protecting Americans from insurance company abuses, lowering costs, reducing prescription drug prices for seniors, making coverage more secure, and offering affordable options to those without coverage, he’s anxious to see it and debate the merits of it,” the White House official said.

Legislators from both parties applauded the meeting, while holding to their positions on the health care legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a statement reacting to Obama's call for what Reid called "a bipartisan, bicameral health insurance reform meeting":

“Senate Democrats join with the president in reaffirming our commitment to seeking a bipartisan solution to health reform. We have promoted the pursuit of a bipartisan approach to health reform from day one. As we continue our work to fix our broken health care system, Senate Democrats will not relent on our commitment to protecting consumers from insurance company abuses, reducing health care costs, saving Medicare and cutting the deficit.”

"Obviously, I am pleased that the White House finally seems interested in a real, bipartisan conversation on health care,” said House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Oh.) in a statement Sunday. He added: “The problem with the Democrats' health care bills is not that the American people don't understand them; the American people do understand them, and they don't like them.”

The announcement of the televised meeting comes as Democrats have expressed growing confusion about how the White House plans to deliver a health care reform bill this year, after two weeks of inconsistent statements and little hands-on involvement by Obama.

Democrats on Capitol Hill and beyond said last week they had no clear understanding of the White House strategy and were growing impatient with Obama’s reluctance to lead the way toward a legislative solution.

The bipartisan talks are the latest iteration of Obama's plan to restart health care, which has been stalled in the more than two weeks since Democrats lost the Massachusetts Senate race. In that time, Obama or his top advisers have talked of breaking the bill into smaller parts, keeping it together in one comprehensive package, putting it at the back of legislative line and needing to “punch it through” Congress.

Obama told Couric that he did not regret holding back on health reform to pursue a jobs agenda.

“Keep in mind: Jobs were my number-one priority last year,” he said. “Do I wish we could have done it faster, that it hadn’t been so painful slow through the legislative process? Absolutely. But it was the right thing to do then. It continues to be the right thing.”

As for meeting with Republicans, Obama on Thursday described the “next step” as sitting down with the GOP, Democrats and health care experts. “Let's just go through these bills — their ideas, our ideas — let's walk through them in a methodical way so that the American people can see and compare what makes the most sense,” Obama said.

At the same fundraiser, Obama seemed to acknowledge for the first time that Congress may well decide to scrap health care altogether — an admission that blunted his repeated and emphatic vows to finish the job. The White House said Obama’s remarks were misinterpreted and he intends to finish health reform.

Speaking to Couric, Obama acknowledged public unhappiness with all the special deals in the legislation. “What we have to do is just make sure that it is a much more clear and transparent process,” he said. “I’ve got to push Congress on that.”