Sausagemaking

A freshman governor with little tolerance for legislative sausagemaking and a love for press conferences.

In a complex process of legislative “sausagemaking,” legislative leaders assembled a bipartisan supermajority to win passage of this major reform.

And White House officials admit they underestimated how ugly Capitol Hill's sausagemaking process would look in the spotlight, turning a debate about expanding health coverage, controlling costs and reining in the abuses of profit-obsessed insurers into a brawl over "death panels," taxpayer-funded abortions and congressional giveaways to Nebraska.