WASHINGTON - -After nearly a year of congressional wrangling over how to reshape the nation's health care system, the last of five congressional committees endorsed its own sweeping blueprint Tuesday for expanding coverage and beginning to whittle down costs.
The historic vote by the Senate Finance Committee set the stage for an intensifying debate - and lobbying by health care providers, consumer advocates, labor unions and other interest groups - as the final process of legislative decision-making begins.
The vote also offered the first tangible sign that the health care campaign by President Barack Obama and his congressional allies might win some Republican support. Maine Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, a centrist Republican who has been courted for months by Democrats, joined all 13 Democrats on the panel to back the measure.
"Is this bill all that I would want? Far from it," Snowe said in announcing her eagerly anticipated vote. "But when history calls, history calls."
Speaking to reporters at the White House after the vote Tuesday, Obama praised Snowe, even as he acknowledged that hurdles remain. "This bill is not perfect, and we have a lot of difficult work ahead of us," he said.
The Maine senator was the lone GOP defector. The other nine Republicans on the committee opposed the bill, which had been designed by Chairman Max Baucus of Montana with an eye toward keeping moderate Democrats on board and creating the possibility of at least some Republican support.
Most Republican lawmakers denounced the Democratic health care campaign Tuesday, renewing complaints that they have been excluded from the process.
"The real bill is currently being written behind closed doors," said Utah's Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, referring to the fact that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, is beginning the process of trying to meld Baucus' bill with a more liberal measure that moved through the Senate health committee this summer.
Reid plans to meet today with Baucus and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat and leading proponent of the health committee bill. The majority leader hopes to have combined legislation on the Senate floor by the end of the month.
A similar process is under way in the House of Representatives, where senior Democrats are working to unify their diverse caucus behind a health care bill.
