Claire McCaskill: don't try to push revised health care reform until Brown arrives.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) has joined Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) in warning leaders not to try to push a revised health care reform bill through the Senate before newly elected Republican Scott Brown arrives.

McCaskill said Wednesday morning that “people out there” believe the agenda is "going too far, too fast" and that it would be a "huge mistake" for Democrats to force a vote on a new bill in the Senate before the new senator from Massachusetts is seated.

"As I said to somebody last night:, everybody needs to get the Washington wax out of their ears and listen and pay attention that people out there believe that we are going too far, too fast," McCaskill told POLITICO.

At the same time, however, McCaskill defended the administration's approach, saying the president inherited an economic recession that he couldn't resolve with "little itty-bitty baby steps."

"You take the big things we had to do, as related to the economy, and you combine that with the frustration of the American people and a big health care bill that frankly, because it was big and complicated, it lent itself to this almost virulent misinformation that got out there," McCaskill said. "The more those seeds planted, the more they flourished in that environment, and I think now we've got to hunker down and be realistic about what we can accomplish and certainly realize that if we don't pay attention to what the voters say in Massachusetts, then I think we do so at the peril of our party's effectiveness." (CONTINUES HERE)