WASHINGTON (The New York Times News Service) -- Democrats in Congress showed signs of enthusiasm for passing a health care bill yesterday after President Obama offered his own proposal Monday. But it remained far from clear whether they could muster enough votes to pass a bill, and the political focus remained on tomorrow's "summit" between Obama and congressional Republicans -- which is threatening to become more of a showdown than a sober policy debate.

Republican leaders condemned the president's plan as a warmed-over version of the Democrats' previous bills, which attracted virtually no GOP support, and they called on the president to drop his threat of passing health care without the GOP if necessary.

The president has characterized tomorrow's meeting -- which will be broadcast on television -- as a good-faith effort to get Republicans and Democrats to cooperate on health care. But given the strong rhetoric from both sides leading up to the event, it appears unlikely to produce any agreement.

The parties remain miles apart on health care: Most Democrats want to see a comprehensive bill that makes significant progress toward providing insurance for the nearly 50 million Americans without coverage; Republicans want to focus on much smaller steps to lower health care costs.

Republicans are furious that, even as Obama is ostensibly offering Republicans an olive branch, some Democrats are plotting ways to bypass the GOP altogether using budget reconciliation, a parliamentary procedure that lets bills pass the Senate by a simple majority, circumventing a filibuster by the minority party.

"It seems to me that until the Democratic leaders take reconciliation off the table, it will be very hard to believe they intend to engage us," said Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona. He added that reconciliation "was never designed for a large, comprehensive piece of legislation such as health reform."

Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, retorted that Republicans should "stop crying" about using reconciliation. The procedure was used to pass President Bush's tax cuts this decade, a welfare overhaul in the 1990s, and President Reagan's tax cuts in the 1980s.

The plan Obama put forward on Monday was based largely on agreements Democratic leaders had made in trying to resolve differences between the House and Senate bills before Jan. 19, when Massachusetts voters elected Republican Scott Brown to fill the seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy.

Brown's election deprived Democrats of the 60-vote majority required to pass a compromise health care bill under normal rules without the GOP's help.

House Democrats met at noon yesterday to review the president's proposal, and afterward House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the president's plan had been well-received. House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman appeared encouraged after the meeting and said he thought Democratic leaders were "very close" to getting majorities in the House and Senate behind a bill.

US Representative Jim McDermott, a Washington Democrat, said members are beginning to realize that whatever passes can be adjusted later, and that major pieces won't take effect for years. "There's no surprises left in this whole process. It's now just a matter of moving the pieces around till it makes sense as a bill to 218 people," he said.

But several moderate Democrats sounded less confident. House majority leader Steny Hoyer, in his weekly briefing with reporters, declined to say much about the president's plan, adding at one point that Democrats "may not be able to do it all." Two other prominent moderate Blue Dog Democrats in the House, Baron Hill of Indiana and Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania, also declined to comment on the president's proposal.

Republicans say they hope to persuade Americans watching tomorrow's televised summit that their approach is the right one. Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, ticked off six GOP goals: Providing help for small businesses, allowing people to buy insurance across state lines, reducing frivolous lawsuits against doctors, reducing waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid, and expanding health savings accounts.

"We think we should first ... go step by step, reducing costs, and by doing that allow more people to buy insurance, because it will cost less," he said.

He said Democrats have rejected the GOP ideas, but in fact a number of them have been incorporated into the Democratic bills -- for example, Obama's plan includes ideas for reducing fraud in government programs; and the Senate bill would establish a national private health insurance plan and provide tax credits for small businesses.

Democrats argue the Republicans' proposals would help insure only a tiny fraction of the 30 million people the Democratic proposals would.

Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said enough Democrats voted for the House and Senate bills late last year to throw their support behind a final compromise.

"A lot of members have said, listen, I fought the battle, I took the bullet," he said. "For goodness sakes, let's have a bill at the end of the day. Let's not end up empty-handed."

Copyright 2010 The New York Times News Service. All rights reserved.