He's the Man with the Too Popular Plan

By Jill Smolowe

Congressman Jim Cooper is under attack by the White House -- and he's $ relishing every minute of it. "That's a special place of honor," he says. "It's the highest compliment you can be paid in politics." Actually, it's not the soft-spoken Tennessee Democrat himself who has rankled the Administration. It's Cooper's health-care plan, a centrist proposal that has become the clear favorite of the Democratic Leadership Council, the very forum that served as the launching pad for Clinton's assault on the Oval Office. "Who am I? I'm a nobody," Cooper demurs. "But all of a sudden, they're afraid our bill is too popular."

For the Clintons, the problem with Cooper's plan is that it threatens to usurp the political turf the Administration needs to claim: the middle ground. The plan appeals to conservatives by shunning the Clinton requirement that all employers pay 80% of workers' health premiums. It appeases moderates by trimming employers' tax deductions on premiums. And it mollifies free marketeers by doing away with Clinton's proposed caps on insurance premiums. "We're the only bipartisan approach," Cooper maintains. "We're true to managed competition."

But the Administration also lays claim to the managed-competition banner -- which makes for a conundrum. How do you silence someone who is presumably a star tenor in your own choir? The trick, apparently, is to publicly praise the renegade for his perfect pitch -- then start a whisper campaign that he sings off-key. Last Wednesday, White House health guru Ira Magaziner praised Cooper's plan repeatedly during a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The next day, Clinton told TIME that his Administration's much-ballyhooed dispute with Cooper "has been thrown out of proportion. I think there can be a deal there."

This fueled the appearance of reconciliation -- not coincidentally, just a day before Clinton and Cooper were to address the DLC. But behind the scenes, some Administration officials say the First Lady and Magaziner have no intention of compromising with Cooper. Says one official: "Universal coverage is non-negotiable, and the Cooper plan does not provide for universal coverage. Period. We are not going to back away from the notion that everyone should have a package of basic benefits. Period. And the Cooper plan does not do that. Period."

Those in the no-compromise faction that surrounds the First Lady calculate that they don't need Cooper to make the Clinton plan fly. Instead they are wooing the estimated 90 members of Congress, most of them liberals, who favor , a Canadian-style, single-payer system. This official calculates prematurely -- and improbably -- that with those votes, the Clinton plan is just 30 votes shy of passing. But in trolling for those votes, the Administration does not want to continue giving free publicity to Cooper by campaigning against his plan.

Cooper is deft at the love-y'all-hate-y'all game too. Last week the four- term Congressman asserted, "The Clintons deserve all the credit for leadership on this issue." Yet he refused to budge even an inch from his plan, which enjoys the bipartisan co-sponsorship of 57 Representatives and is sponsored by Louisiana's John Breaux in the Senate. While maintaining a veneer of respect, Cooper sent a few darts in the President's direction last week. "We're battling the entitlement psychology," he said, adding, "There are several promises in the Clinton plan that sound delightful, but we haven't found the revenue for them -- or the savings."

As a new-style, Oxford-educated Southern pol, Cooper knows his adversary well. In September Clinton invited Cooper to the Army-Navy Country Club in Arlington, Virginia, for a round of what Cooper called "no-mercy golf." (Clinton beat Cooper by a single stroke.) When Cooper tried to dash off to deliver a 30-minute speech by phone to the Tennessee Association of Broadcasters, Clinton detained him with repeated urgings to "stick around" the White House. Twice Clinton offered -- without success -- to make a few of his own comments to the Tennessee group. Finally, when the time for Cooper's speech was at hand, the President escorted Cooper up to the White House family quarters to place the call. While Cooper was on the air, Clinton popped in with a third offer. This time Cooper had little choice but to surrender the phone. All told, the men spent eight hours of quality time together that day.

Last month Clinton invited Cooper for a photogenic 30-minute jog around the National Mall. Later that same afternoon Cooper was among the anointed who disembarked from Air Force One in Memphis to hear Clinton speak on crime. "Cooper was with us on NAFTA, and was with the President in Memphis," says presidential counsellor David Gergen. "Everyone can have a seat at the table, but there is a ticket: universal coverage."

And there's the rub. Cooper's health plan offers only "universal access," which would enable -- but not require -- all Americans to buy coverage. To try to go beyond that, he says, "is not universal coverage so much as compulsory enrollment." Even that, he claims, is as impossible to enforce as compulsory auto insurance. "You still have to buy uninsured-motorist coverage, 'cause there are still too many of these turkeys on the road," he says. "And that's relatively easy to police in comparison with health coverage."

Clintonites counter that Cooper's scheme leaves too much room for cost shifting, the current practice in which hospitals and other health providers pass along the costs of the uninsured to insured Americans. The Administration also believes that without the promise of universal coverage, Americans will perceive any imposed health-care plan as all pain and no gain. Finally, the Administration balks at Cooper's proposal to establish an independent agency to designate a basic benefits package, which wouldn't happen until after his bill is signed into law.

Still, the two plans converge far more than they diverge. Both promote regional health-purchasing cooperatives, guaranteed coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions and competition among providers to push down costs. The companion Senate version has drawn far less Administration fire. The White House believes Breaux is a team player, and will support Clinton in the end.

All of which leaves the question: Who's using whom? It's possible that Clinton has been using the Cooper plan as a stalking horse to provide jittery Republicans with a middle-of-the-road refuge while the true dealmaking with liberals gets under way. And Cooper may be tilting at White House windmills largely to increase his stature in anticipation of his campaign for the Senate next year, when a special election for Al Gore's former seat is held. One thing is likely: when Cooper runs, Clinton, who wants to hang on to the Senate's Democratic majority, will be right there, smiling at his side.

With reporting by James Carney and Julie Johnson/Washington and Susanne Washburn/New York