Dems will Rahm the Health Care Through beginning Monday: Today's Summit Be Damned!

Politico is reporting that an unnamed Democratic official says today's health care summit is to give a face to gridlock, and the reconciliation process will begin next week.

Health Care

During the summit, Harry Reid this very morning, said no one has talked about reconciliation but Republicans!

A Democratic official said the six-hour summit was expected to “give a face to gridlock, in the form of House and Senate Republicans.”

Democrats plan to begin rhetorical, and perhaps legislative, steps toward the Democrats-only, or reconciliation, process early next week, the strategists said.

After the summit, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid planned to take the temperature of their caucuses.

“The point [of the summit] is to alter the political atmospherics, and it will take a day or two to sense if it succeeded,” the official said.

Positive statements by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La. of late “are early signs the environment is already shifting a little in favor of revisiting health care.”

Think the Democrat plan can't garner enough Democrat support to pass even by reconciliation?

Positive statements by Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA, of late “are early signs the environment is already shifting a little in favor of revisiting health care.”

Democrats plan to take up the president’s comprehensive, $950 billion plan — referred to on the Hill as “the big bill.” The alternative would be a smaller — or “skinny” — bill that would provide less coverage and cost less. But that would amount to starting the complex process over.

I'm live-blogging the summit, for as long as I can sit here to do it.

Linked by pamib who has a hilarious piece on what really happened in the health care summit day - hope you' read it.