Baucus speaks! Bipartisan health deal could come today-or not

Baucus: Bipartisan health deal could come today
By Jeffrey Young
Posted: 07/16/09 01:49 PM


Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Thursday that a same-day bipartisan deal on healthcare reform is possible.

“I hope we can reach some kind of agreement by the end of the day,” Baucus said after a two-hour meeting with a core group of negotiators including Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and others. Also Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters he hoped to put healthcare reform legislation on the Senate floor the week after next and to pass it before the four-week August recess.

Baucus has kept his cards close to his vest on when he expects a bipartisan agreement to gel – and when his committee can begin formally marking up a bill – even as President Obama and the Democratic leadership have ratcheted up the pressure to get a bill passed by the Senate before the August recess.

Indeed, almost immediately after expressing hope that a round of intense meetings with senators would produce a deal on which the Finance Committee could base its bill, Baucus backpedaled. “I don’t want to say today, but as soon as possible,” he said.

Even if the Finance Committee begins its markup next week, its bill would have combined with a partisan bill approved Wednesday by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, but Baucus suggested that the hardest part is the bipartisan deal.


more...

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/baucus-bipartisan-health-deal-could-come-today-2009-07-16.html

Why does our party cater more to the Republicans than they cater to their own voters?

http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2009/07/16/baucus-obama-not-helping-on-healthcare/

Baucus: Obama not helping on healthcare
@ 1:20 pm by Eric Zimmermann


The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee says Obama is hindering a bipartisan compromise on healthcare legislation by opposing a tax on healthcare benefits.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) told reporters today that the President "doesn't want" such a compromise, even though Baucus think it's the most feasible way to raise necessary revenue.

"The president isn't helping," Baucus said, according to the NY Times. "He doesn't want it."

The question of taxing healthcare benefits to pay for reform is a dilemma for Obama, since he attacked John McCain in the 2008 campaign for proposing such a tax.

I learned my lesson with Clinton. It's not enough just to pass "something" so that a Democrat can say they got something done. Using that strategy Clinton dismantled AFDC, gave us NAFTA, gave us the Telecom Act of 1996, and repealed Glass-Steagal. On those fronts, Clinton was a disaster for working Americans, but he remained popular. No. Not this time. "Just any new law" will not do.

And this one is a disaster in the making.

:dem:

-Laelth

as to be useless. Unless of course you are a health insurance company.

Or unless you are Obama and just want to claim "success" in something. Even though it's not. Unless of course a watered-down, health insurance company-friendly bill that won't help the people who really need for years, if they can even take advantage of it, is what Obama really meant during his campaign...which, given his lack of concern for helping those in need if they're not a rich bank, probably was.

Let's be clear, the majority of the cost of this bill will be paid by a massive, new tax on the uninsured that equals 12% of gross income. Someone tell me how that is a good idea.

The uninsured are the people who can't afford to pay new taxes now. Heck, if I could afford that, I would have purchased insurance already.

This bill does many good things, I admit, but a new, whopping, 12%-of-gross tax on the uninsured makes no sense, will cause massive resentment, and is likely to drive people away from the Democratic Party in droves.

I would rather Congress do nothing than to pass this bill.


:dem:

-Laelth

has pretty much dismissed that idea because of lack of cooperation.

It's been hinted at for weeks, but White House senior adviser David Axelrod said they are focused more on results than bipartisanship. “‘We’d like to do it with the votes of members of both parties,’ Axelrod said. ‘But the worst result would be to not get health-care reform done.’ And White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel added: “That’s a test of bipartisanship -- whether you took ideas from both parties,” Emanuel said. “At the end of the day, the test isn’t whether they voted for it,” he said, referring to Republicans. “The test is whether the final product represented some of their ideas. And I think it will.”

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/07/15/1996732.aspx