With his August deadline now dead, President Barack Obama must hope the prospects for health reform this year haven’t expired as well — but the backsliding and bitter words on Capitol Hill this week show just how much his sweeping plan is at risk.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision Thursday not to seek a Senate vote on health reform before the recess means the House most likely won’t act either — putting the votes off until September.

The delay opens the most ambitious legislative initiative in more than 40 years to a month of fierce scrutiny as special-interest groups ramp up what was already expected to be a firestorm of ads, organizing and lobbying. Democrats will head home without a single plan to promote, complicating efforts to counter a suddenly more cohesive Republican opposition built around the plan’s trillion-dollar price tag.

And although the end of the year is still five months away, the job becomes exponentially harder as the days tick down toward the 2010 election.

Also, it was Obama himself who set the August mark specifically because he was worried about the dangers of delay. He had hoped to lock in bills from each house to create a legislative point-of-no-return and ease the process of merging the bills in the fall.

However, Reid, a Nevada Democrat, finally conceded what had become obvious to many involved in the negotiations and announced the Senate could not pass a bill by August. The decision came a day after Obama held a prime-time news conference aimed at breaking the logjam on Capitol Hill — a move health reform advocates clearly hoped would put the full weight of Obama’s personal popularity and salesmanship skills behind the effort.

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