From NBC's Luke Russert
CAPITOL HILL -- House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) says Democrats can pass health reform in the next 15 days.

(As we reported, Democrats could have between 10 and 15 days to try to get a cloture vote on health care.)

Hoyer further called the Senate bill "better than nothing."

"I think moving ahead is essential if we are going to make sure every American is going to have access to quality affordable healthcare," Hoyer said, "and if we as a nation are going to be able to afford the healthcare system that is increasingly driving people off the rolls and making it tougher for governments at the state level and federal level to have dollars to spend on other activities…I think the Senate bill is clearly better than nothing, so we'll see."

On Martha Coakley, Hoyer said, "I'm not going to anticipate, speculate or hypothesize on what may or may not happen in Massachusetts today. I am very hopeful and my expectation is that Attorney General Coakley will be elected to the United States Senate. The reason I am hopeful about that is that I believe on balance the policies that she supports are policies that are supported by the voters of Massachusetts. ...

"Obviously special elections are a different breed as you are not entirely sure who is going to show up at the polls but I'm not going to speculate on that until it happens. ...

"Again, I don't want to speculate on that, because we are not there on making that decision. We are making progress on figuring on the differences between the Senate and the House, the fact is that the our objective is to get agreement and not to take the Senate bill or the House bill, it's to get an agreement and we are working on that."

Asked what the tight race says about the Democratic agenda, Hoyer said, "I don't need the Massachusetts race to tell me the psyche of the American people, I just need to go to the grocery store, people are angry, fearful and very concerned about where the economy is…they know that things aren't what they ought to be. ... 

"We brought change; it hasn't affected on the ground -- change as quickly all of us would have liked.

"We are unpopular because people don't feel good and we are the leaders in Congress and they expect us to do something, we've been trying to do something about it, I think we are making success, 50% increase in value of stock holdings is progress, until the numbers turn around and there is more stability people are going to be angry."