Dodd: Health Reform by Memorial Day

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), a senior member of a key committee, said Monday he wants the Senate to pass a a comprehensive health reform bill by Memorial Day.

Moving health reform by May 25 would be an impressive feat for the Senate, even with a full-court press by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Finance Committee.

Lawmakers such as Kennedy, Baucus and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) have repeatedly declared they want to move a big healthcare bill this year. Dodd’s timeline is considerably more ambitious.

President Obama is expected to highlight health reform in a joint address to Congress Tuesday and in the budget outline he will release Thursday. In addition, the president said Monday that he will stage a summit on health issues at the White House next week.

Even with the full support of the president, setting a late-May deadline for passing legislation that would make significant changes to the healthcare system would president a considerable challenge to the Congress: No lawmaker has even introduced a bill as of late February.

Dodd currently chairs the Banking Committee but could find himself thrust into the center of the health reform fight if Kennedy, who is ailing from a brain tumor, is absent or at less-than-full strength. As the second-most senior Democrat on the HELP Committee, Dodd is positioned to take over if Kennedy were to vacate the chair.

According to a White House press pool report, Dodd made his comments during a session on healthcare that was part of Obama’s fiscal reform summit at the White House Monday.

At the same event, Baucus made a little bit of news of his own. Baucus rejected the notion — favored by some Democrats and liberal activists — that the Senate should use the budget reconciliation process to advance healthcare reform.

“It has to bicameral and bipartisan. I am often asked by some, ‘Well Max, why don