WASHINGTON Democratic lawmakers are increasingly confident they can resurrect their sweeping health care overhaul legislation after weeks of uncertainty about whether they could overcome the opposition of Republicans.

Democratic leaders, who have struggled to find a way to unify their own ranks, have settled on a strategy to avoid a Republican filibuster by persuading wary House Democrats to pass unchanged the health care bill approved by the Senate last year and send it directly to President Barack Obama for his signature.

At the same time, Democrats in the Senate are rallying behind the use of a legislative procedure known as budget reconciliation to push through a separate package of health care measures to satisfy liberal Democrats in the House.

That package - which would require a simple majority and would not be subject to a GOP filibuster - combined with the overhaul bill, would result in a bundle of legislation close to the blueprint outlined by the president Monday.

"I'm more interested in the package than the process," Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., a former critic of using reconciliation, said Tuesday at the Capitol.

Senate leaders say they believe they have the 51 votes necessary to pass the reconciliation package.

On the other side of the Democratic ideological spectrum, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., a co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus who has criticized the Senate health bill, expressed optimism that Democrats were nearing a breakthrough. "I think we are on our way," she said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., still must find 218 votes to advance the Senate legislation, a task that has grown harder with the death and departure of several Democratic lawmakers in recent days. Some House Democrats also continue to express concerns about details of the emerging legislative strategy.

Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak, a conservative Democrat who has pushed for tough restrictions on federal funding for abortion, expressed concern Tuesday that Obama's proposal does not include sufficient safeguards.

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are keeping up their criticism of the president's plans.

"We just don't care for this bill, and neither do the American people," said Virginia Rep Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican. "And it's time for us, it's time really for this president and the majority in this Congress to start listening to the American people."

Obama has said he would review Republican suggestions to amend Democratic health care legislation at his planned summit Thursday. But few believe that a bipartisan compromise is likely.