Frank: Health Care Compromise "Dead"

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) said any hope for a compromise between House and Senate health care reform legislation is dead following his state's election of a GOP senator last night.

"I think the measure that would have passed, that is, some compromise between the House and Senate bill, which I would have voted for, although there were some aspects of both bills I would have liked to see change, I think that's dead," Frank said in an interview Wednesday morning on Sirius-XM Radio. "It is certainly the case that the bill that would have passed, a compromise between the House and Senate bills, isn't going to pass, in my judgment, and certainly shouldn't."

Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, shepherded his own version of health care legislation through his committee last year. But, he said, election results should be respected, and Dems should avoid trying to force a vote through Congress before Sen.-elect Scott Brown (R-MA) takes his seat.

"I know some of my Democratic colleagues had been thinking about ways to, in effect, get around the results by working in various parliamentary ways, looking at the rules, trying to get a health care bill passed that would have been the same bill that would have passed if [MA AG] Martha Coakley [D] had won, and I think that's a mistake," Frank said. "I will not support an effort to push through a House-Senate compromise bill despite an election. I'm disappointed in how it came out, but I think electoral results have to be respected."

"I don't think it would be appropriate for the Democrats to say well, we're going to -- for instance, some of the right-wing people were suggesting [Dems] were going to delay seating Sen. Brown so that Sen. [Paul] Kirk, the appointed successor to Sen. Kennedy, could give it the 60th vote. That would be very wrong. I would oppose it, and wouldn't vote for any bill that was a product of that," Frank added.

The comments came just hours after other Dems suggested they, too, would not go along with an effort to finish health care legislation before Brown takes his seat. Last night, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) became the first to call for a suspension of health care votes until Brown joins his new colleagues.

"It is vital that we restore the respect of the American people in our system of government and in our leaders. To that end, I believe it would only be fair and prudent that we suspend further votes on health care legislation until Senator-elect Brown is seated," Webb said in a statement.

Frank, who represents a southeastern MA district based in Newton, Tauton and New Bedford, lavished praise on the Dem nominee in his home state, but he admitted she proved less adept on the campaign trail than Brown had.

"I'm disappointed. Martha Coakley has been a great attorney general and she would have been a great senator, but she was not a very good candidate. And Scott Brown was a very good candidate," he said.

Meanwhile, Frank said health care legislation should go back to square one, and that prospect offers hope of finding a bipartisan solution.

"We are back to where we were maybe even years ago. That is, there is now no bill that I believe can pass or should pass," he said. But, he added, Dems may find a newly willing ally in Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), the only Senate GOPer to vote in favor of any health care legislation. "Sen. Snowe may be willing to work now with her Democratic colleagues, and maybe 3, 4, 5, 6 other Republicans would be, to try and put something together. If that's not the case, and Sen. Snowe and others aren't for some fairly significant changes, then we'll go into the election with the health care status quo."