Republican state senators called on California Attorney General Jerry Brown Tuesday to join other states and sue the federal government over health care reform.The legislators said Congress cannot force people to buy health insurance or any other products.Attorneys general in 13 other states have already filed suit against the health care overhaul that President Barack Obama signed into law. The bill will require most Americans to carry health insurance.

“I think that many Californians share the same view that this is the greatest expansion of government in a generation,” said Senate Minority Leader Dennis Hollingsworth, R-Murrieta.State Sen. Tom Harman, R-Huntington Beach, sent the letter to Brown.“The federal government is limited in what it can and can’t do by the Constitution,” Harman said, calling the measure a violation of the commerce clause.

Brown issued a statement saying he had instructed his deputies to review the claims made by the senators.However, Brown, a Democrat and former two-term governor, noted that all but one of the 13 attorneys general who vowed legal action were Republicans.“Health care is not the place, with people’s lives at stake, to engage in poisonous partisanship,” Brown said in the statement.

The White House issued proposals Monday for health care reform that have won kudos from several Democratic lawmakers, a sure sign, say Republicans, of how little GOP input is in the plan.Republicans have agreed to show up at the White House Thursday for a summit on health care, but are heading there with a dim view of the outcome.“It’s disappointing that Democrats in Washington either aren’t listening, or are completely ignoring what Americans across the country have been saying,” U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a written statement.

“House Republicans welcome any good faith effort to start over on health care reform but the bill President Obama unveiled today is just more of the same government-run insurance, mandates and taxes the American people have overwhelmingly rejected,” added Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.The White House, however, insists that the bill is more than just camouflage, but rather represents compromise.“Senator McCain in the campaign had a proposal to add — to add those dependents on to your parents’ health care up to a certain age to allow for what is a gap in the uninsured based on when someone leaves the dependency of their parents and gets a job that provides health care,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, noting that provision has been included in the president’s proposals.

Gibbs argued that 160 Republican amendments were included in varying pieces of legislation that made its way through the House and Senate.“Inexplicably, all those ideas weren’t good enough,” he said.

Two moderate Democratic Senators facing re-election battles this year said Tuesday they would oppose using a legislative tool that requires only 51 Senate votes to get health care legislation to President Barack Obama’s desk.
Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Indiana, called the move, known as reconciliation, “ill-advised,” while Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Arkansas, issued a news release rejecting the procedure.
“I will not accept any last-minute efforts to force changes to health insurance reform issues through budget reconciliation, and neither will Arkansans,” Lincoln said in the statement.

Both the House and Senate have passed separate health care bills, entirely on support from Democrats.
Democratic leaders were working on merging the two bills, but the nation’s political landscape changed last week when Massachusetts elected Republican Scott Brown to fill the Senate seat held by liberal Democrat Ted Kennedy for almost 47 years until he died in August.
Brown’s victory cost Democrats their 60-seat super-majority in the 100-member Senate necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster. The shift means Republicans can block Democratic initiatives such as health care reform.

Now Democratic leaders are working on a plan for the House to pass the Senate bill, along with a separate package of changes in the Senate plan that reflect compromise between the two chambers.
The package of changes would have to pass both the House and the Senate.
Without the 60-seat super-majority, Senate Democrats now are considering using the reconciliation tool that would require only 51 votes to pass the measure.