Since the beginning of the year, various coalitions—some of them composed of strange political bedfellows like AARP and the Business Roundtable—have emerged to advocate major health care reform.

The latest entrant into the dialogue is a group of 40 corporations that is calling for universal coverage through a market-based system and is encouraging people to take personal responsibility for staying healthy.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, says that the group, which dubs itself the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform, represents a significant change in the way that business is approaching the issue.

When Congress wrestled with a then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s universal coverage plan in 1994, corporations warned that reform would cost too much. Now, Wyden contends, corporate America is saying that the status quo is too expensive. Indeed, the health care bill is consuming much more of the bottom line today than it did 13 years ago.

But I’m not convinced that these political-mélange groups will hold together when Washington gets down to the brass tacks of legislating. It’s one thing to launch an organization whose goal is to build political will to tackle health care reform. It’s another to remain cohesive when bills are cobbled together in potentially heated negotiations on Capitol Hill.

For now, these groups can sign on to legislation with which they don’t entirely agree in the hopes of advancing the debate.

For instance, it doesn’t seem that Safeway CEO Steve Burd, who leads the recently formed business coalition, is sold on the idea of companies getting out of the health care business and paying into an insurance pool from which their workers would buy individual coverage. Yet that’s exactly what a bill written by Wyden does—a piece of legislation that Burd has endorsed.

Washington is a town that thrives on details. Deciding where to move a semicolon or where to place a period in a 700-page bill can mean millions of dollars to a company or hundreds of millions to an industry. As business organizations like to say, the corporate community is not monolithic.

So, before we come close to arriving at a bill that would overhaul the U.S. health care system, individual companies—not to mention labor and other interest groups— likely will break out of disciplined formations and promote the policies that suit their circumstances best.

This is a perfectly legitimate—and potentially volatile—approach. The splintering of these organizations at the end of the health care reform process will produce a more compelling story than their coalescing at the beginning of the debate.

In the presidential campaign so far, the Democrats have more money, more momentum and more optimism. The Republican field by comparison is sluggish. Unless a new candidate emerges or one of those already in the race can break out of the doldrums and energize the electorate, GOP hopes of holding on to the White House will diminish.

If a Democrat takes over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in January 2009 and the party maintains control of Congress, it could usher in a big change for workforce policy—well, any policy—because Republicans would lose the safety net of a presidential veto on legislation it opposes.

So that means that the action will focus on the Senate even more so than it does today. Democrats maintain a 51-49 margin in the Senate. But under Senate rules, it takes 60 votes to end debate, or stop a filibuster, on a bill and move to a final vote.

That 60-vote bar is hard for a majority party to reach if it has only 51 members. Not only does it have to persuade at least nine Republicans to come over to its side, it also has to stop the defection of its own members.

This dynamic likely will come into play with the Employee Free Choice Act, which would permit the formation of a union if a majority of workers sign cards authorizing collective bargaining. The bill was easily approved by the House because under that chamber’s rules the majority has much more power.

But on the other side of Capitol Hill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, says he intends to stop the so-called card-check bill. It’s likely that the Senate could be headed toward a filibuster.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa and a strong supporter of the unionization measure, said in a conference call this week that the prospects for the bill in the Senate “are pretty good.” He meant that it could register a majority on a straight vote. “It might even garner some Republican votes,” he said.

But he admitted that getting to 60 is a different story. “That might be problematic,” he said. This situation may come up often on other bills, too.

So, as you parse the election horse race, keep an eye on Senate candidates. Watch how the GOP is faring in critical races. And then do some math. If polls are showing that Republicans are losing seats, figure out how close to 40 they’re falling. As they near that “magic” number, it becomes harder for them to stop legislation.

Even a few votes above 40 can mean a lot. In 1993, President Clinton was sworn in and the Democrats had majorities in the House and Senate. But Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole and 42 other GOP colleagues were able to exercise significant influence on the legislative agenda.

And, of course, there were times when enough Democrats from the majority turned on Clinton to defeat his proposals—for instance, the demise of the 1994 version of universal health care promoted by then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But still, if the Republicans slide toward 40 in the Senate, it could create a big challenge for McConnell and a whole new legislative ball game on workforce issues.

In the past couple weeks, the issue of equal pay has found the spotlight on Capitol Hill. On April 12, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee held a hearing on the issue. The House Education and Labor Committee weighed in with its own hearing on April 24, which was Equal Pay Day—or the day that women are said to have earned the same amount of money as men did as of December 31 of the previous year.

During the House hearing, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-District of Columbia, asserted that the Equal Pay Act, which was passed in 1963, needed to be updated.

She has signed on to a bill written by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Connecticut, that would allow women to sue for punitive damages in addition to compensatory damages already provided under the Equal Pay Act. It also would prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who disseminate salary information to their colleagues.

Norton, a former chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, argued that the equal pay statute is “creaky” and “has fallen into disuse.” She says that one of the reasons it has lost its bite is because the threat of being liable for back pay is not enough to scare corporate America.

“Employers learned long ago how to build back pay into the cost of doing business,” Norton said.

Now that’s a novel and forthright argument—and one that deserves some rumination. It would seem that businesses want to avoid lawsuits at any cost, and there’s certainly not a lack of wage discrimination cases in the court system.

But maybe after a generation of operating under the Equal Pay Act and other measures like it, business has built back pay into its revenue and expense projections. Would any of our readers like to give me some guidance on this question?

Executive compensation may be gaining a foothold as an issue in the presidential campaign thanks to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois. Obama recently introduced in the Senate a measure that would give shareholders an advisory vote on executive pay. The House approved an identical bill, 269-134, on April 20. The House measure was written by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Although a senator has free rein to bring up a bill on the floor, giving Obama a chance to attach his measure to any piece of legislation at any time, he’s not the presidential candidate to watch on this issue. Keep your eye on Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut.

Dodd is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. That puts him at the heart of executive compensation debate in the Senate. So far, he has not indicated that he will champion Frank’s idea. Thanks to his bill, Obama may have something to talk about on the campaign trail, but Dodd is the one who has more influence in deciding whether “say on pay” becomes law.

Obama only had two co-sponsors as of April 30—Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and John Kerry, D-Massachusetts—so there doesn’t seem to be a groundswell of support in Senate. But voter frustration with soaring executive pay that is unrelated to company performance has gotten the attention of lawmakers in Washington. Even President Bush has said that the situation is getting out of control.