Obama hopes to avoid Clinton mistakes

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- Political observers say President-elect Barack Obama hopes to avoid the mistakes of the Clinton administration by working with Congress on a healthcare plan.

Tom Daschle, D-S.D., the former U.S. Senate majority leader named to be Obama's Secretary of Health, has already begun reaching out to Congress, two leading senators told the Boston Globe Friday.

"The only way for this to work is to have both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue working hand-in-glove," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., head of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said in a statement. "And all signs are that's how it will proceed. It's not Congress or the White House, it's both together."

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., was in the Senate when President Bill Clinton named his wife, Hillary, to draw up a national healthcare plan in the early 1990s.

"Congress did not want to be told what to do," Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee chairman, said. "They're very cognizant of that and they don't want to make the same mistake."