By John Shaw

WASHINGTON (MNI) - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offered starkly different views on the effort to pass healthy care legislation Tuesday, with Reid saying a years-long effort is nearing its stretch run and McConnell saying that Democrats are trying to ram radical changes through Congress.

In back-to-back briefings after Senate policy lunches, Reid and McConnell continued to speak about health care legislation in sharply different ways.

McConnell, speaking first, said Democrats should "stop, start over, and get it right."

McConnell warned Democrats not to use budget reconciliation rules that would allow them to push a health care bill with limited debate and restricted amendments and 50 votes.

He warned Democrats not to use a "legislative loophole to restructure one-sixth of the our economy."

McConnell said reconciliation rules, used in this way, are a "device" and a "trick" that should not be employed.

Reid said the health care debate has gone on for years and has been intense this year. There has been a "very healthy and deliberate debate," he said.

Reid said most Republicans have decided to take an oppositional stance toward health care reform, but did praise Sen. Olympia Snowe from Maine who remains open to supporting health care reform legsilation.

"Republicans have chosen not to be participants in this discussion," he said.

Reid has said his first preference is to pass a package through the regular legislative process which would require 60 votes to end an almost certain Republican filibuster.

But if there aren't 60 votes in hand, Reid said he is willing to use the budget reconciliation process to move a health care bill. This process would require only 50 votes to pass a bill in the Senate, but the package would be a narrower one given Senate rules on reconciliation.

On another matter, Reid said he would carefully review any bill the House might pass to extend unemployment benefits for 13 additional weeks to states that have high unemployment rates.

"We will look at that very, very quickly," Reid said.

** Market News International Washington Bureau: (202) 371-2121 **