ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Congressional Democratic leaders are at the White House again today talking health care. They've been racing to get a bill finished so that the president can tout it in his State of the Union speech. But now they've got a more ominous deadline - next Tuesday's special Senate election in Massachusetts.
NPR's Julie Rovner explains.
JULIE ROVNER: Speaking to House Democrats yesterday afternoon, President Obama said he knows the public has serious doubts about the health care bill.
President BARACK OBAMA: I see the polls. I get 40,000 letters every day and I read a stack of them each night. I catch the occasional blog post or cable clip that breathlessly declares what something means for a political party without really talking much about what it means for a country.
ROVNER: Still, most Democrats are predicting that a final bill will pass. New York's Louise Slaughter says if for no other reason than that having no bill would be even worse.
Representative LOUISE SLAUGHTER (Democrat, New York): The fact that we know we have to do it, that we're not going to get hold of this economy as long as 16 percent of it is going the way it is.
ROVNER: 16 percent of the economy going to health care, that is, and growing each year. But now there's another challenge to the health care effort. In Massachusetts, one of the most Democratic states in the country, a little known Republican, State Senator Scott Brown is in a dead heat in the race to replace the late Senator Edward Kennedy. If Brown wins next Tuesday, he's vowed to become the 41st vote needed to block the bill in the Senate. This afternoon, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied that the Massachusetts Senate race was affecting the timetable of the negotiations.
Representative NANCY PELOSI (Democrat, California; House Speaker): We were on this course of action anyway, because what we wanted to do is to move this legislation because I don't think American people can wait any longer.
ROVNER: Negotiators overcame a huge hurdle yesterday when they reached a deal with organized labor to scale back attacks on high cost health plans. Pelosi blessed the deal today.
Rep. PELOSI: This is something the president wants to have in the bill in principle, and he will. I think the principle is preserved, but the working families and middle class in our country will not feel the negative impact that we fear.
ROVNER: But even if negotiators do get a deal this weekend on the outlines of the bill, its cost still needs to be estimated by the Congressional Budget Office. That means a final vote could still be days or even weeks away.
Julie Rovner, NPR News, Washington.