Bipartisan Infrastructure Talks Recall Heated Health Care Summer of 2009

Once again, a bipartisan group of senators is seeking to bridge a deep policy divide, but the lesson of failed negotiations on the Affordable Care Act has left Democrats skeptical about an infrastructure deal.

WASHINGTON — The heated summer of hostile town hall events and death-panel scare tactics was bleeding into the fall of 2009, and still, bipartisan negotiations over what would become the Affordable Care Act dragged on. Republicans kept lodging new objections to President Barack Obama’s plan even as he delivered ultimatums and gave speeches applying political pressure. In the end, only one Republican, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, supported a version of the health bill in a crucial committee vote — and then even she opposed final passage once it reached the floor. As President Biden pushes for an elusive bipartisan compromise this summer on a major infrastructure bill, those extended and fruitless talks on a health care deal loom as a cautionary tale. With a fish-or-cut-bait moment approaching as soon as next week, unpublished interviews from a 2014 New York Times oral history of the health law show why Democratic leaders who lived through 2009 are not eager to let talks drag out much longer.