Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid
Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader
With five different committees producing health-reform bills in the liberal House and more centrist Senate, the potential for a legislative train wreck is enormous. Ultimately, it will fall to the Democratic leaders of the two chambers to make sure that doesn't happen. Indeed, if health reform does pass, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the final product will be written in their offices. But it is hard to overstate the difficulty of finding common ground, even among Democrats. Pelosi says she is firmly committed to the idea that health reform must include the option of a strong government-run public plan, for instance; it is unclear whether that has the votes to pass in Reid's Senate.